Radboud University / Hasselt University

Radboud University Medical Center / Hasselt University

Institutions :

The Radboud university medical center advances human knowledge by conducting biomedical, translational and clinical research in order to improve wellbeing. Its key strength is medical life-sciences and clinical practice, with an impressive infrastructure comprising state-of-the-art technology platforms and (translational) research facilities. The Radboud university medical center is therefore uniquely positioned in the emerging Euregio and Dutch healthcare infrastructure to play a leading role in the new healthcare paradigm of prediction, prevention and personalised medicine. Its department of Internal Medicine is a large tertiairy care facility with a substantial and diverse involvement in the academic missions of patient care, teaching and research.  Its section of Infectious diseases, host defense and inflammation is conducting research within the themes of Infectious Diseases and host response, poverty related diseases and inflammatory diseases. The department of Internal medicine will make available one of its staff members, Prof IC Gyssens.

Hasselt University (UHasselt), Limburg province, Belgium ranks in the top 3.3% among the 22,000+ degree-granting institutions of higher education worldwide, Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) cwur.org. This position is in accordance with UHasselt’s policy to excel in academic education and to be at the forefront in well-defined research domains with benefits for the economy and society. The scientific research conducted within the Center for Statistics (Censtat) of Hasselt University is internationally renowned, both for its theoretical as well as for its applied component. Education and consultancy records are excellent. Jessa hospital in Hasselt is a 1002-bed teaching facility collaborating with the university in the Limburg Clinical Research programme (LCRP). For details of Jessa hospital see the section “Third parties” of Hasselt University. The Hasselt team consists of a PhD student, a microbiologist post doctoral supervisor, a research nurse and a statistician.

Role in the project:

Prof IC Gyssens will be made available by Radboud University Medical Center for clinical guidance of the project and for supervision of the research for the clinical evaluation of the rapid diagnostic systems.
The main task attributed to the Hasselt University team is conducting the research for the clinical evaluation of the diagnostic systems. The research will be embedded in the Cluster of Infectious Diseases of LCRP under the guidance of Prof Gyssens.  The clinical and laboratory research will be done on the premises of Jessa hospital, which acts as third party for Hasselt University in the project. The prospective sample and data collection is conducted in collaboration with the Limburg Biobank UbiLim, which provides infrastructure and logistics for the storage and the transport of samples. The diagnostic intervention study will be conducted in selected departments of Jessa hospital. CenStat will supervise, evaluate and validate the statistical analysis of the clinical data.

Scientific Manager and involved team:

Professor Gyssens obtained her MD from Antwerp University, Belgium in 1978, where she completed her training in internal medicine after serving as a tropical doctor in NW Africa for 5 years. She trained in Infectious Diseases at Leiden University in 1988 and obtained her PhD degree from Nijmegen University, the Netherlands. From 1992 to 2007 she was appointed at the department of Medical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam and was Deputy Director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program.
Her research interests focus on Antimicrobial resistance, optimizing antimicrobial therapy, Antimicrobial stewardship intervention studies and skin and soft tissue infections. She has conducted research both in developed and in low-resource countries.
She served as chair of the ESCMID Study Group for Antibiotic Policies, has been the National Delegate for the focal point of Antimicrobial Resistance Netherlands, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), was expert for WHO and is associate editor on the Clinical Microbiology & Infection (CMI) Editorial Board. She has published more than 120 cited peer reviewed papers.