Published on August 2nd 2019 – This week, ZonMw awarded eight research projects Exercise and Physical Activity worth over 5 million euros. ACHC researcher Gert-Jan de Bruijn will participate in Active4Life, one of the awarded projects. In the Active4Life project, Big Data analyses will be applied to investigate effective intervention ingredients to stimulate physical activity in the population.
In the research project Active4Life, information from five effective physical activity interventions will be collated. Through machine-learning, the most effective ingredients to stimulate physical activity will be identified. Based on this knowledge, a new intervention to promote physical activity will be developed and tested.
In this new intervention, three new elements will also be added: these elements are very likely to enhance the effectiveness of this new intervention. Gert-Jan will supervise one of these elements, namely the development and implementation of a chatbot. This is a virtual coach that will stimulate people as effectively as possible to be more physically active during the day. Through machine-learning, the chatbot will learn what the best possible way is to stimulate an individual to be physically active, resulting in a highly-personalized information provision.
The project’s Principal Investigator is Professor Lilian Lechner from Open University Netherlands.
More information about the grant awards can be found here.