Virtuele mensen worden steeds zichtbaarder in het dagelijks leven. Ze lezen het nieuws, begeleiden patiënten, helpen met huiswerk en spelen hoofdrollen in films en games. Dankzij kunstmatige intelligentie en gametechnologie worden ze razendsnel overtuigender en zijn ze overal aanwezig. De vraag is niet meer óf ze ons leven binnenkomen, maar hoe we dat goed regelen.

Daar is de missie van VIVALDI. Als eerste nationale kennisplatform voor virtuele mensen brengt VIVALDI vijf hogescholen samen: Breda University of Applied Sciences, Fontys, Hogeschool Rotterdam, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht en Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Samen met partners uit zorg, onderwijs, media en industrie werken negen lectoraten aan de kennis die Nederland nodig heeft.

Dat klinkt als muziek in de oren

Want er liggen fundamentele vragen open. Hoe realistisch moet een virtuele mens zijn, en wanneer slaat dat door? Wat doen ze met ons gevoel van vertrouwen, identiteit en verbinding? Waarom blijven zoveel veelbelovende toepassingen steken als prototype? En wie bewaakt de normen en waarden die in elk virtueel mens worden ingebakken?

VIVALDI onderzoekt deze vragen systematisch, over sectoren en toepassingen heen. Het platform ontwikkelt gedeelde onderzoeksmethoden, praktijkgerichte ontwerpstandaarden en concrete governance-kaders. Bovendien staan het organiseren van een tweejaarlijkse nationale conferentie, samenwerking met beleidsmakers en het delen van de resultaten met de sector op het programma.

Het resultaat: een platform dat Nederland in positie brengt om virtuele mensen niet alleen te begrijpen, maar ook verantwoord te ontwikkelen en in te zetten, nu en in de toekomst.

Expertise vanuit de hoofdstad

De Hogeschool van Amsterdam draagt via de faculteit Digitale Media en Creatieve Industrie bij met twee samenwerkende onderzoeksgroepen, die VIVALDI verankeren in mensgerichte en maatschappelijk ingebedde digitale innovatie.

Vanuit Digital Life is available for download associate lector Child Technology Interaction Simone de Droog betrokken. Zij leidt onderzoek naar de manier waarop sociale robots en digitale personages positief, duurzaam en ethisch kunnen bijdragen aan het welzijn en de ontwikkeling van kinderen in zorg- en onderwijscontexten.

The L.INT-lectoraat Hybrid Realities onder leiding van Esther Hammelburg levert aan dit consortium waardevol onderzoek naar het thema liveness, evenals expertise op het gebied van virtual humans (VH’s) in de context van deathtech. Aangezien dit lectoraat een samenwerking is met het Rathenau Instituut, brengt het bovendien expertise en een netwerk op het gebied van overheid en beleid in, evenals ervaring met de dialoog met burgers en een focus op publieke waarden.

An increasing number of older people are recovering at home following a stay in a geriatric rehabilitation centre. The REHABOT project is developing a smart AI assistant that supports older people during their recovery at home and helps healthcare professionals gain a better understanding of the recovery process.

Reason 

Due to the ageing population, pressure on the healthcare system is rising rapidly. At the same time, older people are spending increasingly shorter periods in care facilities following a hospital or rehabilitation stay, meaning that a large proportion of their rehabilitation takes place at home. 

Digital rehabilitation platforms and sensor technology make it possible to support patients at home and monitor their progress remotely. However, these systems also present challenges. Healthcare professionals often lack context regarding patients’ home situations, making it difficult to interpret sensor data. Digital feedback also frequently lacks the personal nuance of face-to-face support. 

This creates a need for technology that not only collects data, but also helps to better understand it and to support patients in a way that is both clear and motivating.

Goal 

REHABOT is developing an AI-supported rehabilitation system that helps older people recover at home and supports healthcare professionals with remote monitoring and guidance. 

The project is investigating how artificial intelligence can contribute to more personalised, understandable and context-aware support during the rehabilitation process.

Expected outcomes 

The project delivers: 

• An AI-powered home rehabilitation assistant for older people.

• A digital platform for monitoring and support by healthcare professionals.

• New insights into human-centred AI applications in healthcare.

• Enhanced support for home rehabilitation and greater opportunities for personalised remote support.  

In addition, REHABOT helps to reduce the pressure on geriatric care and supports independent recovery at home. 

Image & Video

Publications

Project duration

from 01-09-2026 to 01-09-2028

Project manager

Bin Yu, associate lector, Digital Life, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Researchers

Somaya Ben Allouch, lector, Digital Life, HvA

Michel Oey, docent-onderzoeker, Digital Life, HvA

Daniel Bossen, associate lector eHealth en Beweeggedrag, HvA

Margriet Pol. associate lector Technologie en Participatie, HvA

Shihan Wang, associate professor, Universiteit Utrecht

Marije Holwege, lector Geriatrische Revalidatie, Hogeschool Inholland & Omring

Funding

SIA RAAK Publiek

Partners

• Omring
• De Zorgcirkel
• Argos Zorggroep
• Hipper Therapeutics B.V.
• PAM B.V.

Children’s maths performance is declining. At the same time, the shortage of primary school teachers is increasing. The teaching time available is spent on the cognitive aspects of maths: ensuring that children understand and master the basic skills. But maths is a subject in which negative emotions also play a significant role – more so than in other subjects. And those emotions can have a negative impact on maths performance.

Although teachers agree that emotional aspects are important, they lack the time, knowledge, skills and appropriate tools to address these systematically. This gave rise to the idea of developing a robot assistant for teachers that takes children’s emotions towards maths into account. Based on brief, child-friendly micro-check-ins, the robot can deploy appropriate emotion-regulation strategies where necessary. In this way, both the cognitive and affective aspects of maths can be addressed, without placing additional time pressure on teachers.

Image & Video

Publications

Project duration

from 01-09-2026 to 01-09-2028

Project manager

Simone de Droog, associate lector Digital Life, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Researchers

Somaya Ben Allouch, lector Digital Life, HvA

Marianne Bossema, docent-onderzoeker Digital Life, HvA

Monique Schaule Jullens, programmamanager Digital Life, HvA

Matthijs Smakman, lector, Hogeschool Utrecht

Veerle Hobbelink, promovendus, Hogeschool Utrecht

Rosa Alberto, onderzoeker, Hogeschool Utrecht

Mike Ligthart, assistent professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Sanne van der Ven, docent-onderzoeker, Radboud Universiteit

Funding

SIA RAAK Publiek

Partners

• Expertisecentrum Ponto
• Smartrobot.Solutions
• Florente basisscholen
• Gemeente Diemen

In Amsterdam districts where many residents have a low socioeconomic position, people often face a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and limited access to care. This creates a paradox: those most at risk often seek help only when symptoms have become severe.

During our HARTstikke Gezond community health weeks, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and BMI are measured in local neighbourhoods. Yet the core problem is not the lack of measurements, but the absence of an effective mechanism that connects these biomedical values to personal, social and environmental context.

AI as a Bridge develops this missing link: an AI-triage system that translates measurements into clear advice, and a connected matchbot that converts this advice into concrete actions and suitable local activities. Together, these systems help residents
better understand their results, turn advice into action, and take earlier steps towards improving their health.

Image & Video

Publications

Project duration

from 10-10-2026 to 10-10-2029

Project manager

Dr. Bart Baselmans, hoofddocent Biomedische Technologie – Faculteit Techniek, Hogeschool van Amsterdam

Researchers

Somaya Ben Allouch, lector, Digital Life, HvA

Bin Yu, asscoiate lector, Digital Life, HvA

Wiek Dirks, Biomedische Technologie, HvA

Pim Kruijt, Biomedische Techonologie, HvA

Funding

ZonMw IMDI (Innovative Medical Devices Initiative) | Technologie voor Bemensbare Zorg – vraaggestuurde innovaties

Partners

• Buurtcampus Amsterdam Oost and Zuid-Oost
• GOO Amsterdam Nieuw-West
• Amsterdam UMC, Cardiologie
• LOA Foundation
• Nederlandse Hartstichting
• Eindhoven Engine
• AlleyApp
• Universiteit Utrecht | ELSA Lab
• GGD Amsterdam
• Team Sportservice
• ROZO
• Gemeente Amsterdam

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we interpret cancer scans. Research shows that AI can detect cancer faster and often more accurately, delineate tumours and monitor treatment outcomes, sometimes better than doctors. Yet AI is still only used to a limited extent in hospitals, both in the Netherlands and worldwide. This is worrying, as radiologists face high workloads, staff shortages and the risk of burnout.

Some tasks in oncological imaging, such as measuring tumours or marking them for radiotherapy, are crucial but also repetitive and mentally exhausting. AI can take over a large part of this routine work. This leaves doctors with more time and energy for what really matters: complex decisions and collaboration with other specialists to plan the best care.

The challenge is not only to build smart AI, but also to ensure that this technology fits seamlessly into hospital processes and actually supports doctors in their daily work.

Project duration

1 Sep 2026 -1 Sep 2030

Project manager

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

Researchers

dr Bin Yu

Dr. Kevin Groot Lipman, Het Nederlands Kanker Instituut

Dr. Doenja Lambregts, Het Nederlands Kanker Instituut

Funding

ZonMw Open Competition

Partners

• Nederlands Kanker Instituut (NKI)
• Universiteit van Amsterdam
• ELSA Lab Health Inequity

‘Wat als gezondheidsgegevens niet alleen in spreadsheets zouden staan, maar tot leven zouden komen via interactieve objecten en immersieve ruimtes om ons heen?’

De Health-Data-Design-Playground (HDDP) maakt deze visie werkelijkheid door ontwerpers in staat te stellen ruwe sensorgegevens om te zetten in boeiende, data-gestuurde dagelijkse gezondheidsinterventies door middel van praktische experimenten met gezondheidssensoren en persoonlijke gegevens.

Hoewel sensoren en technologieën voor gezondheidsmonitoring steeds nauwkeurigere inzichten opleveren, slagen veel huidige gezondheidsinterventies er niet in om een lange termijn effect te bereiken vanwege een slechte integratie in het dagelijks leven en een gebrek aan boeiende interactie en ervaringsgericht ontwerp. HDDP overbrugt de kloof tussen ontwerp-intentie en technische implementatie.

Door toegankelijke sensorkits, gedeelde datasets en ontwerpgerichte softwarebronnen aan te bieden, verlaagt het platform de drempel om met complexe biosensoren en datapijplijnen te werken. Hierdoor kunnen ontwerpers verder gaan dan speculatieve concepten en snel prototypes maken voor de praktijk, wat de ontwikkeling van haalbare, ervaringsgerichte en mensgerichte gezondheidsoplossingen ondersteunt.

Als gedeelde onderwijs- en innovatie-infrastructuur binnen de HvA ondersteunt HDDP interdisciplinair onderwijs en samenwerking tussen opleidingen op het gebied van ontwerp, gezondheid en technologie. Op de lange termijn streeft HDDP naar het bevorderen van zinvolle, boeiende en duurzame gezondheidsinterventies die persoonlijke reflectie stimuleren, gedragsverandering ondersteunen en participatieve gezondheidszorg versterken naast traditionele klinische zorg.

Project duration

1 maart 2026 – 1 februari 2027

Project manager

Bin Yu

Funding

Centre of Expertise Creative Innovation

Partners

• A+N Studio
• Studio Rogier Arents
• Fashion Tech Farm
• TU/e Industrial Design

A digital platform offers opportunities to support older adults in their daily functioning and social participation, in collaboration with (informal) care. The platform has features to encourage daily activities at home and participation in community activities, as well as support the network.

Although care and welfare professionals are increasingly open to digitally supported care, digital tools and interventions remain underutilized. Professionals are uncertain about how to integrate these into care while maintaining quality. Additionally, they have little confidence that older adults, especially those with fewer digital skills, will use the digital platform.

This project aims to support older adults with care needs and their networks in sustainably optimizing and maintaining daily functioning and social participation at home with the help of a network of professionals and informal care supported by digitalization. We do this by further developing, integrating, and evaluating an existing digital platform in collaboration with older adults, their social network, and professionals.

Image & Video

Project duration

 Feb 2026 -1 Feb 2030

Project manager

dr Margriet Pol

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

dr Michel Oey

Stephanie Kramer MSc

Daniël Bossen, Faculteit Gezondheid, HvA

Jesse Aarden, Faculteit Gezondheid, HvA

Rick Kwekkeboom, Faculteit Maatschappij en Recht, HvA

Merel van Schravendijk, Faculteit Maatschappij en Recht, HvA

Funding

SIA RAAK-PRO

Partners

• Amsterdam UMC Ouderengeneeskunde
• ROC van Amsterdam – Zorg en Welzijn
• MBO College West
• ROC van Flevoland
• Ben Sajet Centrum
• Gemeente Amsterdam
• GGD Amsterdam
• Centrum voor Cliënten ervaringen/ Clientenbelang Amsterdam
• Amstelring
• Zonnehuisgroep Amstelland
• ViVA zorggroep
• Compaan
• Landelijk Expertisecentrum Pharos
• Ouderen panel Amsterdam UMC en ouderenpanel smart health & vitality lab HvA
• ActiZ
• Zorgverzekeraars Nederland (ZN)
• Beroepsvereniging V&VN
• Ergotherapie Nederland
• Fysiotherapie in de Geriatrie (NVFG)

Within SPIRIT, research groups from universities of applied sciences are actively involved in the use of technology for manageable care. They are organised in a so-called “SPRONG group” to form a strong research basis for and with practice.

The basis of this SPRONG group consists of eleven research groups engaged in the development and deployment of care technology. They have been working together for several years in the national research platform Platform for the Deployment of Technology for Health and Wellbeing (PIT).

More spirit for healthcare professionals

SPIRIT focuses on the development, implementation and evaluation of technology for Manpower-Friendly Care (TvBZ). “Manpower-friendly” refers to anything that helps healthcare personnel to do their work to a high standard and to their satisfaction. Reducing work pressure and deploying (scarce) healthcare personnel more intelligently contributes to this.

The aim of bringing together the relevant research groups in this SPIRIT consortium is to make the necessary technological innovation more effective and faster. Innovative projects and pilots are currently taking place throughout the Netherlands.

National collaboration with nine universities of applied sciences

Healthcare and knowledge institutions and entrepreneurs often do this at regional level in their own way, while elsewhere in the country there is often already knowledge available about how to approach this (better): How do you design something together with a specific target group? How do you implement a particular technology effectively? What are the appropriate methods for evaluating the added value?

By engaging in more intensive knowledge exchange at the national level in the areas of healthcare content, technology and methodology, we can learn to tackle these innovative processes more quickly, whether we are healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, teachers or practical researchers. But just as important: there will be more uniformity and coordination in methodological approach and less fragmentation/overlap in innovative projects. This ultimately puts less pressure on the healthcare workplace and helps entrepreneurs develop their innovations more quickly.

Better manageable care

The activities of the SPRONG group (and the underlying projects) focus on all phases of technological innovation. In addition to incorporating current activities related to evaluation/uniform valuation into SPRONG, the same approach is being taken with regard to research activities related to product development and the implementation and upscaling of healthcare technology. A technological innovation must – in all likelihood – lead to (better) manageable care.

All areas of care fall within the activities of the SPRONG group: participating healthcare parties come from elderly care, disabled care, hospital care, rehabilitation, but also mental healthcare.

Project duration

1 Jan 2026 -1 Jan 2030

Researchers

Funding

SPRONG | Regieorgaan SIA

Partners

• Hogeschool Windesheim
• Hogeschool Rotterdam
• NHL Stenden
• Hogeschool Saxion
• Hogeschool Utrecht
• Hogeschool Zuyd
• Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen (HAN)
• Fontys Hogeschool
• Omring

In the Netherlands alone, dementia affects approximately 290K people. As the population ages and caregiver shortages grow, supporting people with early-stage dementia to maintain their ability to live at home as long as possible becomes crucial. In this project we aim to develop an intelligent and conversational home system to enhance the quality of life for elderly people with early-stage dementia. We propose to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to provide personalized care by mapping the need and preference of individuals.

Built based on the just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI) design concept, the conversational system will adapt to contexts of individual users and therefore provide the right types of support at right timings taking account personal preferences and contextual status.

We will design and develop multimodal interventions (combining text, image, music, etc.) for target users, as well as the optimal deliver strategies on conservational interactions between the intelligent system and human users.

The project will fit under the umbrella of KIA social theme ‘Health & Care’. This innovation enables families and caregivers to leverage advanced AI technology for improved support, offering societal and economic benefits by enhancing care quality and easing the burden on caregivers.

CALL
Wanted: participants for this research, november 2025!

Project duration

1 Jul 2025 -30 Jun 2028

Project manager

Shihan Wang, Utrecht University

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch
Stephanie Kramer MSc
dr Michel Oey
Wen-Tseng Chang, Utrecht University

Funding

CLICKNL

Partners

illi Engineering B.V.

Anxiety and pain are common in children undergoing medical procedures. A new potential anxiety- and pain-reducing method for hospitals is the use of social robots. While these are successful in distracting children in the puncture room, hospitals want a robot that can be used more broadly, namely in various medical procedures among a wide age group of children. It is also important that the caregiver himself can easily deploy the robot within the care process.

Hospitals came up with the idea of programming a robot that can apply the medical hypnosis technique “guided fantasy”, using positive suggestions to give a different meaning to frightening thoughts or experience pain in a different way. The various question articulation discussions with hospitals, robot researchers, robot programmers and suppliers, medical hypnosis experts, and representatives of the robot industry and the child-in-hospital perspective, eventually led to the practical request to:

develop a plug-and-play robot that can effectively use guided fantasy to reduce anxiety and pain among 4- to 12-year-olds during various medical procedures in hospital, taking into account children’s personal and age-specific needs and practical feasibility and practicability.

This practice question will be answered through four work packages in collaboration with children, parents, caregivers, technicians and researchers:

1. First, the hospital practice situations and key robot requirements within the consortium will be mapped in order to use them to develop a first prototype of an AI-assisted (autonomous) social “dream robot” that applies guided imagination.
2. This prototype will first be further refined and better tailored to the practical situation in a series of short-term tests in different hospital practice situations.
3. Next, the dream robot will be tested on a large scale for its anxiety- and pain-reducing effects among children of different ages in a long-term hospital study.
4. Finally, what is needed for the wide adoption and introduction of the dream robot in hospitals will be identified.

Next steps

Over the next few years, the project will focus on testing the Dream Robot in different hospital contexts, closely involving children, parents and caregivers. This iterative approach will ensure that the robot is effective and user-friendly. The ultimate goal is to widely implement the Dream Robot, making a substantial contribution to children’s comfort and well-being during medical procedures.

Project duration

1 Sep 2024 -31 Aug 2026

Project manager

dr Simone de Droog (HvA / HU)

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

Funding

RAAK-publiek

Partners

• Beatrix Kinderziekenhuis
• Erasmus Universitair Medisch Centrum Rotterdam (Erasmus MC)
• Hogeschool Utrecht
• smartrobot.solutions
• Praktijk voor Medische Hypnose
• Prinses Maxima Centrum voor Kinderoncologie
• Stichting Kind en Ziekenhuis
• Stichting Sint Antonius Ziekenhuis
• Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht (UMCU)
• Vereniging High Tech NL
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)