For Robin: A brother’s efforts to revolutionize mental healthcare

Sander van den Borne defends his EngD thesis on September 20th at the school of medical physics and engineering Eindhoven, which is part of the department of Biomedical Engineering.The family of EngD researcher Sander van den Borne know all too well about how a mental disorder can affect a family member. Sander’s sister Robin was diagnosed at an early age and lost her battle with mental disorders at just 19 years old. Motivated by his sister’s story, Van den Borne has developed a technological solution to help doctors and institutes alike to monitor patients taking serious medication for mental disorders.

When Sander van den Borne talks about his sister Robin, all sorts of childhood memories come flooding back. “When we were younger, we used to get up to all sorts of trouble at home,” says Sander van den Borne about his childhood with his sister Robin with a smile. “We had lots of fun doing it too.”

Van den Borne is an EngD researcher at TU/e and clinical informatician in training at Mental Healthcare Eindhoven (Geestelijke Gezondheidszorg Eindhoven (GGzE)). His EngD programme is known as Clinical Informatics (CI).

In June 2024, Van den Borne took part in TU/e’s science pitching competition Talking Science where he shared an inspiring three-minute pitch about his EngD work. He finished in a well-deserved second in the competition with a pitch based around the life of his adopted sister Robin.

“That was at a time in the Netherlands when it was a taboo to speak openly about such issues,” says Van den Borne. “And in particular, in a small village with a population of about 1,200, this wasn’t something people spoke about.”

The medications that Robin took required constant patient monitoring by the healthcare system. In addition, Robin switched health care providers several times, which led to even more prescriptions too.

“Robin was around 10 or 11 years old when her issues with mental disorders started. Over the years, she took lots of medication and we do know that she often didn’t take them according to the prescription as she got older. Added to this, Robin suffered because the healthcare system at the time didn’t know how to properly treat her disorders.”

Solving a serious issue

Unfortunately for Sander and his family, Robin passed away in 2009 at the age of just 19 years old. “She moved from one healthcare organization to another, and in the end, no one was really able to help her.”

Motivated by what happened to his sister and her illness, as part of his EngD research, Van den Borne set out to assess and solve a serious issue in relation to medications prescribed to patients – patient monitoring.

Need for constant monitoring

“When you look at the medication process now, it could be improved in many ways. For an organization like Mental Healthcare Eindhoven (Geestelijke Gezondheidszorg Eindhoven (GGzE)), the process of monitoring patients is quite difficult, and the organization is looking for new ways to improve this process,” says Van den Borne.

In the case of medications for mental health disorders, monitoring is critical.

Dosing medications

“These medications can be extremely harmful to the body. If a dose is too high, it can lead to death. On the other hand, if the dose is too low it may not treat the disorder, but it can still damage the body. Thus, it’s imperative that the dose is exactly right so that the patient gets the benefit from taking the medication. Nevertheless, certain medications can shorten the lifespan of people by up to 15 years.”

So, when a patient is taking specialized medication, careful monitoring is always needed, but that’s not happening as much as it should.

“My two-year study in the Netherlands confirms results from longer studies in Denmark and Australia – there are many problems with the monitoring process which leads to so-called avoidable incidents or problems. These are problems that could be circumvented with proper and dedicated patient monitoring.”