Speaker

Chris Van Hoof

imec / OnePlanet Research Center

Biography

Chris Van Hoof - VP R&D, imec & General Manager, OnePlanet Research Center

Chris Van Hoof is General Manager of the OnePlanet Research Center in Gelderland. He is also Vice President R&D at imec. Chris believes preventive health, personalised nutrition, sustainable food production and reduced waste are essential enablers of improving our world for the generations to come. And he is convinced that technology (hardware and AI) are key tools to make that happen. After receiving a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leuven in 1992, Chris has held positions as manager and director at imec in highly diverse fields spanning technology, circuits, systems, data and applications. Apart from delivering industry-relevant innovative solutions to customers, his work also resulted in five startups (four in the healthcare domain). He is also full professor at the University of Leuven and imec Fellow. Although OnePlanet Research Center started just over 3 years ago, it has already built up a team of 100 scientists and engineers, who create innovations in close collaboration with teams from the founding organizations imec, Radboud University and Medical Center and Wageningen University and Research.

Talk(s)

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Chris Van Hoof - imec / OnePlanet Research Center

Managing health instead of managing illness is a disruptive view of the future of healthcare: a focus on prediction, prevention or interception of disease rather than on disease management. This will require new sensing tools and digital twin models that provide individuals and their physicians/life coaches with detailed insights into their evolving health.

As many chronic diseases are linked to diet, microbiome, or immune responses, we particularly need new tools to monitor mechanistic effects in the gastrointestinal tract and gut-brain interactions. While there are plenty of tools able to monitor sleep, heartrate, overall fitness, etc., a tool to track personal gut health is missing. The gastro-intestinal tract however is difficult to access. But what if we could really ‘Fitbit-ise’ gut health ? Meaning: what if we could create a device that makes gut health monitoring accessible to everyone, preventing GI-related problems to turn into serious diseases, and even diagnosing – in a very early stage – diseases such as Crohn’s’ and IBD ? imec is developing such new tools – ingestible sensors, enabling biochemical analysis, microbiome sampling for unprecedented insights in individual gut health, immune health, and mental health. And companion tools that provide insights in diet and eating behavior.

To make the data from these new tools actionable, personalized digital twin models are needed. The human digital twin platform we are building is one that simulates one’s personal GI tract characteristics and digestion of specific foods, showcasing the relationship between lifestyle factors, gut health and (chronic) diseases and allowing for personalized prevention and treatment.