Announcement Medical Delta Café 12 November: the future of precision diagnostics

Metabolic profiles are giving us an ever clearer picture of which type of treatment or medication works best for a specific condition and a specific person. We may even be able to determine, before a disease develops, which health interventions can slow or prevent the disease process. Advanced analyses of huge datasets are giving us growing insight into the cellular processes involved in the development of brain diseases, and into the possibilities for targeted intervention.

These are examples of important steps in biotechnology, molecular diagnostics, AI and digital healthcare. The result: earlier diagnoses, more accurate treatment choices, continuous monitoring and better treatment outcomes for patients. These developments are bringing a form of proactive, personalised healthcare closer, in which health technologies and precision diagnostics play an increasingly important role.

Are we on the threshold of a revolution?

Are these the first outlines of a revolution in medicine? Or are there still too many uncertainties to apply these developments in practice any time soon? Which barriers still need to be overcome, and how can we speed up that process?

We will discuss this at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden with three leading scientists, each of whom works within their own field on breakthroughs that could have a major impact on medicine and healthcare.

• Prof. dr. Thomas Hankemeijer (Leiden University, Erasmus MC) integrates extensive molecular data with clinical information, lifestyle data and population health information. This allows healthcare professionals to gain a much deeper understanding of early disease processes and of how patients respond to interventions.

• Prof. dr. Eline Slagboom (LUMC, TU Delft) studies how so-called “metabolites” in the blood can predict the risk of vulnerability to certain conditions. In the future, such biological profiles could even be measured continuously, making it immediately visible whether an intervention is contributing to better health.

• Prof. dr. Boudewijn Lelieveldt (LUMC, TU Delft) is part of a large international consortium, which also includes the Allen Institute, that is building a detailed atlas of the different cell types in the brain. This extensive, multi-year research may help to provide a sharper picture of how brain diseases arise and how we can prevent, diagnose and treat them in a more targeted way.

All three scientists are “Medical Delta professors” with appointments at multiple South Holland universities. You can therefore expect contributions that cross domains and build bridges between science, technology and healthcare practice.

You can register for the Medical Delta Café here.