My Health Gain: what is my real biopsychosocial age and how can I improve this?

Professionals from TNO, ArboDienst Beter, Achmea Vitaliteits BV Actify, and Zilveren Kruis Achmea, collaborated together in order to improve their digital toolings with the aim to improve motivation of behavioral change in time preventing the onset and progression of Non-Communicable Diseases.

Although a lot of generic knowledge is available which determinants and lifestyle changes may have a positive effect on health, it appears to be very difficult to motivate individuals towards a healthy behavioral lifestyle change in time as the effect of a (set of combined) lifestyle changes which results in most effective health gain on the individual level, depending of a person’s health state and preference, is not known.

The state of a person’s physical and mental health changes over time, and is dependent on the complex (dynamic and adaptive) interactions between genetics, physiology, lifestyle and psychosocial well-being. Therefore, in this project we developed an innovative methodology to calculate and visualize a person’s ‘Real biopsychological Age’, and a person’s potential ‘Health gain’ in years when theoretically changing (a set of) lifestyle based upon a person’s health state and preference. A scientifically based prototype of digital tooling was developed for an easy to understand indication of ‘My real Age’ and ‘My health gain’ while showing the possible effect of changing (a set of) lifestyle changes. Stakeholders were interested in how the prototype could improve a person’s individual behavior, health coaching while collecting more personalized data. The feasibility and appreciation of the prototype in real life will be further evaluated by Achmea Zilveren Kruis Achmea and Vitaliteits BV Actify.