Hello, my name is Herman. I live in Assen, a town in the northern Netherlands, along with my wife and two daughters. When I was in high school, I thought I would end up doing something with technology, before switching to physiotherapy right when I was studying for my final exams. After graduating from college, I worked at a primary care physiotherapy center called Paramedics between 2008 and 2017. I specialized in the treatment of patients with heart-, vascular- or lung-diseases, diabetes or obesity.
After having worked as a practitioner for a few years, I realized that I wanted to keep learning and ideally make that my profession. Mid 2016 I graduated cum laude as a Clinical Health Scientist at Utrecht University. I also won the Talma Eykman thesis award at the Faculty of Medicine and published a systematic review on the effect of activity trackers, a qualitative research study on eHealth use by physiotherapists and a mixed-methods study on adherence to an eHealth module by patients.
In August 2016 I started as a teacher-researcher in physiotherapy at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Enschede and earned my teaching qualification there. In September 2017 I was hired as a PhD candidate at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences, TNO and the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG).
My PhD research focusses on modeling employee resilience using wearables and apps. During my research, we attempt to relate objectively measured variables like heart rate variability (HRV) and sleep to subjective mental states and mid- to long-term mental health and wellbeing. If successful, our research might contribute to the development of an automated resilience system that helps to prevent the negative consequences of stress on mental health and wellbeing by giving its users just-in-time feedback based on their personal data.
On this blog, I’ll continue to share my personal developments and research-related activities and interests. New blogposts will be shared on Twitter and LinkedIn, but you can also sign up to be notified via e-mail via the box in the bottom of this page.