Organisation profile

The HOSD platform aims to understand and exploit towards clinical trials and practice how human movement and physical activity and their behavioural, functional and (sports) performance dimensions serve as outcome measures, (early) diagnostic biomarkers and modality for treatment, prevention or delay in many disease areas. This particularly applies to where the musculoskeletal system is directly affected, e.g. in orthopaedics and sports injury as well as but also where the effects are less direct but evident such as with neurodegenerative diseases and other NCD’s of high patient and socioeconomic burden such as cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis or ageing. Here activity profiles and movement patterns are also relevant for patient stratification into clinical trials. 

We conduct and support research related to the systematic assessment of human movement biomechanics, physical activity behaviour, functional performance and associated biometrics using lab-based methods (3D motion capture, force plates), portable, ambulant or remote methods for out-of-lab and free-field measurements, as well as real-life monitoring using e.g. wearable devices, sensors or other digital tools including electronic patient self-reports, experience sampling methods and multi-modal approaches. Our activities comprise the development, selection, configuration, technical and clinical validation and application of such methods in research and clinical practice in translational (from bench-to-bed and back) and transversal (across medical disciplines and diseases) manners. These activities naturally interface with biosignal processing, data science methods such as machine learning.