My background is in biomedical sciences, but I never enjoyed working in the lab. During my Master’s degree I specialized in data science, and continued on this road during my PhD. Here I performed research on the diagnosis of disease (including cancer) using the exhaled breath of patients. During the last year of my PhD I joined the software development team at Maastro and started as a senior researcher after finishing my PhD in 2017. Currently, I work in close collaboration with other researchers, doctors, data managers and IT personnel on the topics of data sharing infrastructure, data science and clinical implementation of data science.
Currently I am mainly responsible for the research theme revolving around clinical implementation of data science. I like this a lot because we are truly able to bring our research into the clinic due to our close contacts with the resident doctors at Maastro.
Research in health care is and should be about creating value for patients, which could include faster and less-invasive diagnosis and treatment, but also better monitoring of disease or patient empowerment. But most research does not reach the clinic. Therefore, I most of all value reproducible high quality research that is clinically relevant and can therefore be brought into the clinic and ultimately benefit the patient.
My areas of expertise are: data science, omics, clinical implementation of data science, shared decision making.