The region wants to be international frontrunner for innovations for healthy living and active ageing, allowing our inhabitants to manage their own health through innovative solutions. By developing sustainable personal care and well-being with scalable business models, the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area will change the ‘care-consumer’ into the health-producer’. A focus on prevention and staying healthy is key to this approach.

To get there, the Amsterdam Economic Board has defined the following theme to work on: Smart Prevention (prevention by smart use of applied data / new knowledge).

Smart Prevention

In the not-too-distant future, we hope that you will not get sick at all. At the moment, diseases are mostly diagnosed in a later stage of the illness, when you have specific symptoms. The more data we have about the diseases, the better we can see how they develop. And the earlier in the course of the disease we can intervene. So if you get ill, we can treat you as early as possible. The ultimate goal is to prevent you from getting ill instead of curing you when you are already ill.

We contribute to a healthier future where:

• Each day brings us new knowledge and ideas on staying healthy
• All health interventions are logged, analysable, and add to the body of knowledge that we have, and that supports our physicians
• Each and every case of disease helps us to better understand the disease development– and brings us closer to preventing it
• Best possible health and prevention of disease will be the norm
• Democratisation of medical knowledge helps reduce health inequality
• Health is truly personal

…and focus on 4P Health initiatives

• Personal – tailored to the individual’s unique situation and characteristics
• Preventive – staying healthy and avoiding deterioration of quality of life
• Predictive – increasing amounts of data and better analyses prospectively indicate effectiveness and added value of interventions
• Participative – health is personal – so the individual should be at the center – and is experienced in a living, working and social environment that influences health. In addition, individual data added to the body of knowledge will help understand disease.

We manage this from the Board in collaboration with the strong health ecosystem and by building on the region’s strongholds in health and analytics.

Amsterdam Region 3-star EU Reference Site for Active & Healthy Ageing

The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (AMA) has been recognised as a Three-star Reference Site for the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy ageing (EIP on AHA). Being recognised as a reference site means that the Amsterdam metropolitan region is regarded as a highly inspirational ecosystem, delivering creative and workable solutions that improve the lives and health of older people. These solutions can be scaled-up and replicated across the EU. For European cooperation in this field please contact Lilian Hoff.

Amsterdam Economic Board and Europe

The knowledge institutes in the Amsterdam region are excellent in European R&D projects. The Amsterdam Economic Board acts when projects need cooperation between knowledge institutes, businesses and government is needed. We are open for questions about cooperation in EU-projects in the field of health, within the subjects mentioned above, for example in Horizon 2020 or Interreg. Our main goal is to connect you to the right stakeholder in our region.

For questions on European cooperation, contact Jeroen Maas, Lilian Hoff (for EIP-AHA), Florentine van Boetzelaer (for international trade) or Audrie van Veen.

The ambition of our metropolitan challenge for health is that by 2025, inhabitants of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area will have gained two healthy life years.