University Medical Center Groningen
Building the future of health, we are the University Medical Center Groningen. This we do in our patient care, scientific research, education and in medical and nursing training programs. In all of these core tasks, we want to excel and innovate, because we know we can be even better. And every day offers opportunities to show just that.
Healthy ageing: How do you do it? Parents pass on their genes to their child. This inherited package of genes determines in part the course of our life and the risk of developing disease, as do factors such as lifestyle, dietary patterns, the amount of exercise and the use of medication. It is not at all clear yet how all of these factors interact, why do some develop diseases, while others stay healthy? To answer this question, UMCG scientists contribute to generating this fundamentally new knowledge.
Our three starting points speak for themselves:
The patient as a person is leading. We want people to be as healthy as they possibly can be. Both now and in the future. Everything we do contributes to this, even if we work with others, e.g. regional healthcare organisations.
We are pioneers in research. Our scientific research results in new knowledge about health, prevention, disease and treatments. We use this knowledge for our innovations: practical improvements in healthcare. All our patients benefit from this. That is why we want to be among the world's best (bio)medical knowledge institutes.
We share our knowledge in the North of the Netherlands and across the globe. Our knowledge belongs to everyone. We share new insights with others and help them apply them in practice. Our education is also based on this innovation. This benefits our patients in the North of the Netherlands and elsewhere. This is why we participate in many (inter)national networks and joint ventures for all our core tasks.
Role within miGut-Health
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is an example disease within the field of complex immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs), caused by a complex interplay between genetic susceptibility, the gut microbiota and the exposome. The exposome is a term used to describe the collective of environmental exposures from conception to death. As IBD incidence rises with the westernisation of countries around the world, the importance of the exposome in the development and course of the disease as well as its potential role in primary and secondary preventive strategies has become eminent. Our role within the miGut-Health project is to focus on (modifiable) exposome factors such as the diet and to study the effects of dietary interventions on patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) using modern eHealth technology and changes in biological/microbial pathways using modern molecular technologies.
