Research team
Expertise
My expertise as a general practitioner-researcher lies in the scaling up of integrated heart failure (HF) care. HF predominantly affects older patients with an average of at least 5 comorbidities. While multidisciplinary care has proven beneficial for HF patients, it is not yet the standard in Belgium. This makes HF an interesting case to study how we can evolve towards seamless integrated care within the Belgian healthcare system for this older, multimorbid population. I defended my PhD in 2018 with the title: "Towards a disease management plan for HF patients in general practice." As a post-doc, I dedicated myself to implementing the recommendations from my dissertation into practice. Together with colleagues, I established the Learning Network Heart Failure, which consolidates the experiences and expertise of eight Flemish transmural HF projects. With the Learning Network, we developed a training program for primary care nurses to become HF educators. We formed a close collaboration with the Belgian Working Group for Heart Failure to create a multidisciplinary HF care pathway. I contributed to the development of a MFO (medico-pharmaceutical consultation) on HF. As guideline coördinator, we made a partial update of the HF guideline, which was outdated. Alongside the updated guideline, we plan to provide HF education materials to primary care, tailored to the needs of patients. In collaboration with Roche Diagnostics, we developed a reimbursement dossier for NT-proBNP reimbursement in primary care. Additionally, I am the co-supervisor of a PhD student, Willem Raat. Between 2015 and 2023, I published 18 peer-reviewed articles in international journals and 5 articles in HuisartsNu. As a teacher, we organized a course for nurses in general practice focusing on HF care, and I actively participated as a speaker in numerous continuing education activities.