Paulien Vermunicht is a postdoctoral researcher in the Cardiovascular Diseases Research Group at the University of Antwerp, where she works at the intersection of healthcare, data science and wearable technology. Trained as a biomedical scientist, she obtained her PhD in Medical Sciences in 2025. Her research focuses on digital health innovations that leverage wearable technologies and data science to improve the monitoring and management of physical activity in patients with cardiovascular disease. Through this work, she bridges the clinical and technical worlds, translating large streams of wearable sensor data into meaningful insights that can support both patients and healthcare professionals in real world care. She leads the development of the Antwerp Activity Index (AAI), a physiologically grounded activity score that uses advanced data processing to identify reliable heart rate signals from wearable devices and convert them into a personalized measure of cardiovascular training load. The system is designed to integrate with healthcare platforms, allowing patients and clinicians to interpret the same information within the care process. The approach is currently being evaluated in a multicenter clinical study in Flanders. Paulien’s research has resulted in several scientific publications, and she recently received a VLAIO Innovation Mandate to further develop and test the Antwerp Activity Index in broader healthcare contexts. The mandate represents an important step toward early valorisation of the technology and the integration of meaningful digital physical activity monitoring into everyday healthcare.