EHDEN is extremely proud of our Coordinator, Prof Peter Rijnbeek, who gave his inaugural lecture to publicly accept his appointment as a full Professor of Medical Informatics, at Erasmus MC Faculty of Erasmus University Rotterdam on March 3rd.
This is a delightful tradition in The Netherlands for a new Professor to outline his/her scientific view and research focus.
Peter presented on the challenges and opportunities of real world data (RWD) to generate reliable Real World Evidence (RWE) at scale in his lecture entitled, ‘Scalable Evidence’.
In his lecture, Peter explained the need and solutions for standardisation of data, standardisation of analytical tools and methods, and creating a research memory. He explained the importance of the open-source community Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) in shifting the paradigm internationally.
He also highlighted the important role of EHDEN and DARWIN EU® as emerging federated data networks in Europe. Looking to the future, these initiatives are instrumental to drive the exciting future of RWD for the open research communities and the regulatory community in generating evidence at a higher scale, quality, and speed.
Research with RWD can be categorised in characterisation, population-effect estimation, and prediction studies, and during the lecture, aspects of methodological developments via his group and in EHDEN were covered across these domains. Also, multiple examples were shared of large-scale studies that included EHDEN Data Partners.
Peter also wove in his own personal experience and insights, including from his prior musical career, and highlighted the role of federation via a video produced during the COVID-19 pandemic by Lord Andrew Lloyd Weber and orchestra.
In his final remarks, he stated that we have made great progress to change the paradigm on the use of RWD for evidence generation thanks to the open science and global collaboration. Peter looked forward to working with many colleagues locally at Erasmus MC, nationally in The Netherlands, and internationally via EHDEN and OHDSI. Scale Matters.
To watch Peter’s lecture, please go here.
