MindApp NL: mobile phone app project by Fred van den Broek to help brain tumor patients follow complex treatment plans

[jayne_h]

Fred van den Broek, one of the managers I worked for at a bank many years ago, started a charity project to help brain tumor patients follow complex treatment programs using a mobile phone app. Fred was sick himself and his own tumor was not responding to treatment. He had worked in the design of apps for banking and put his knowledge of technology to good use to help his fellow patients.

He spent his last months designing MindApp and raising money for it to be built. The app has been financed by a crowd funding campaign,various sponsored events and generous donations from companies, such as Fred's employer ING. The VU Medical Centre in Amsterdam has also partnered with the team.

Fred passed away in August 2015. Fred was an inspiration to his family, colleagues, friends and his medical team.

I'm sure this project will be of interest to many members of the Headway forum. The app is currently being built by software developers in Amsterdam.

There is a preview of the functionality it will offer on the facebook page.

You can read more about Fred and his work here on these links, although some of the posts and videos are in Dutch. Many are in English.

philips.com/content/corpora...

facebook.com/MindAppNL

Fred set up a charity foundation called Into The Clear:

intotheclear.com/

If anyone at Headway wishes to contact the team building MindApp, the person who handles communication is Vincent van Dijk.

[sospan]

We hope Fred's legacy is a success

[Matt2584]

Hi,

I have a brain tumour too and the app sounds great but for me I am lucky enough to not be going through any treatment right now.

I was diagnosed when I was 11, almost 12. My tumour was/still is located on the brain stem and was causing hydrocephalus, a blockage of Cereral Spinal Fluid AKA 'water on the brain'.

I had a second tumour appear just two years later. I have a VP shunt because of the hydrocephalus and have had many operations in total.

All these ops occurred at the time of my life when my diet was terrible. I had a pure junk food diet and this consisted of a lot of sugar intake. I completely believe that a person's diet plays a major role in their health, read up on the bodies PH regulatory system.

Most people on the outside may have labeled me as a pretty healthy kid but how wrong could they be. I was alive but I was not healthy in any way.

I have slowly come away from the poor diet I used to have and try to eat more clean, natural foods now. I used to get headaches quite frequently after my ops but now that my diet is much more clean I rarely get headaches now.

I have mentioned about eating healthy foods a lot before in other posts and it probably can sound annoying to some but I'm only trying to spread the knowledge really. Continue with a horrid diet or pretty bad and health problems WILL get worse. I have seen it, not just in myself but in others too.

[jayne_h in reply to Matt2584]

Thanks for the comments Matt. You are right about healthy eating for patients and for prevention.