Experts

Rick Grobbee is professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Utrecht University and founder of Julius Clinical Ltd., a full service Academic Clinical Research Organization (www.juliusclinical.com) of which he serves as Chief Medical Officer and Statutory Director. He was trained as a medical doctor at Utrecht University. He then conducted PhD research in the field of hypertension at Erasmus University in Rotterdam (12/83-6/1986). At the University Medical Center Utrecht, he just finished his term as the chair of the Center for Circulatory Health at the UMCU governing cardiovascular patient care, research and education. Previous positions include director of the Rotterdam Medical Research Foundation, member of the board of Erasmus University Medical Center, and visiting Associate Professor at Harvard University, Boston. Rick Grobbee has been a (principal) investigator in many large-scale epidemiologic studies and randomized intervention trials relating to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular, cardiometabolic, and cardiorenal disease. He has been listed in the top 100 global most influential biomedical researchers (Eur J Clin Invest 2013 Dec;43(12):1339-65) and has consistently been ranked as highly cited author by Web of Science over the last decades.

Mike Chambers is Director of MC Healthcare Evaluation, which he founded in 2016 to provide advice on generating evidence of value of health technologies for healthcare payers, and he currently provides consultancy services to a variety of pharma companies and specialist research organisations. He contributes to a range of projects within the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative (public-private partnership), where he was a founding member of the IMI GetReal project, and he is also a member of the Technology Appraisal Committee at UK NICE. From 2006 to 2015 he was at GlaxoSmithKline, where he was head of Value Demonstration and Reimbursement in Market Access. In this role he advised on emerging evidence requirements for reimbursement and local access to medicines, and developed innovative methods for communicating the value of GSK’s medicines to healthcare decision makers. Previously he was Director of Health Economics in GSK R&D, where he led the respiratory therapy area health outcomes team. From 2001 to 2006 he was at Amersham Health/GE Healthcare, where he established a health economics function for diagnostic imaging technologies. Mike has degrees in mathematical philosophy, demography and health economics and he has also worked in the UK NHS, University of London, and in HEOR consulting.

Rob Thwaites brings many years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry and in outcomes research in the UK, the US and Australia. Rob is now a freelance consultant, having left Takeda R&D at the end of 2018, where he was responsible for leading the development of RWE plans for compounds across the company’s portfolio; for outcomes research activities across Takeda’s GI portfolio; and for managing the London-based outcomes research teams. Prior to joining Takeda in 2014, he worked for 5 years for the scientific consultancy Evidera, where he was VP for the global Health Economics and Epidemiology practice. His earlier experience in consulting included McKinsey & Co in Sydney and London, and at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Sydney. Rob has participated in a range of activities with the European Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI): over the last ten years, he has co-led two IMI projects, been a reviewer for IMI, and has contributed to the development of calls for a number of new IMI projects. Rob holds degrees in Economics from the University of Cambridge and the University of New South Wales.

Mira Zuidgeest works as an assistant professor at the University Medical Center Utrecht (UMCU) and also part-time at the science driven clinical research organization Julius Clinical, the Netherlands. She is a pharmacist by training with a master in epidemiology and a PhD in pharmacoepidemiology. She has a strong background in observational research, experience as health care provider in hospital pharmacy and a special interest in pediatric asthma, which led her to do a post-doc in Brazil. Her current work at the Julius Center focuses mainly on the topic of pragmatic trials and how to translate the concept of pragmatic trials to a methodologically sound and operationally feasible trial. As such, she is the scientific lead for the task force on pragmatic trials of the IMI GetReal Initiative. Combining the methodological work at the UMCU with the practice of clinical trial conduct at Julius Clinical provides her with a direct link between theory and practice.

Hans Hillege is a professor in Cardiology and his educational records includes Master’s degrees in Medicine and Epidemiology and a PhD from the University of Groningen. Currently he is an acting member of the European Committee of Human Medicinal Products (CHMP) on behalf of the Netherlands. His fields of specialization and research include cardiovascular epidemiology and the impact of extracardiac comorbidities with specific interest in the coexistence of cardiovascular and kidney disease, epidemiological models, clinical trials, evidence based medicine, regulatory science, medical decision-making and health information technology. He has supervised more than 25 PhD projects and authored/co-authored more than 400 international scientific publications and book chapters.

Pieter Stolk has been part of the project management team in IMI GetReal from the start in 2013, and was part of the team developing the Online RWEMD course. He has a background as a pharmacist, and has a PhD from the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology at Utrecht University. He considers himself as a 'generalist', with a focus on topics around regulatory/HTA/policy issues around medicines development.