Marc Blanchard holds a Ph.D. in Life Sciences, specializing in digital health solutions for chronic conditions. As a project leader at Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), Marc leads the DETECTRA project, focused on the development of digital biomarkers for rheumatoid arthritis. He also heads ATREON SA, a spin-off from CHUV, dedicated to deploying remote monitoring solutions for inflammatory arthritis. With a background in Biology and Medical Biology, Marc has expertise in pharmacology, toxicology, and drug development, and he is an active contributor to the digital health community.

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Professor Antoni Chan, MBChB, FRCP, PhD

Antoni Chan is Professor of Rheumatology and Consultant Rheumatologist and Clinical Lead at the University of Reading and Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, UK. He did his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology in Oxford UK. His PhD doctoral research was on the role of NK cells and receptors in spondyloarthritis. He led the Outpatients Transformation Programmes with implementation of remote monitoring and teleclinics.  His research interest is in the use of data, informatics and AI to improve diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic conditions. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Blood+ Network which is an international collaboration. His team won the National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (NASS) Aspiring to Excellence Award. He received the Patient Choice Award for Best Care by a Rheumatologist and Gold Changemaker Award in the Houses of Parliament, UK. He is Trustee and Medical Advisory Board Member of NASS.  He is a full member of ASAS and Primary Investigator for clinical trials in his department.

Harald Enzmann has been chair of the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Committee for Me-dicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) since 2018. A physician by training (graduation 1985), Harald received his MD from theKarl Ruprechts Uni-versity, Heidelberg, Germany. Subsequently, he held positions at the German Cancer Research Center, at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Erlangen, at R&D at Bayer AG, Wuppertal and at the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, NY, USA. Since 2002, he held various positions at the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM), the German regulatory authority for
medicines. Currently, he is head of European and International Affairs at BfArM.

Marianne Harbo Frederiksen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at the Centre for Integrative Innovation Management at the University of Southern Denmark. She is also Academic Director for Lifelong Learning at the Department of Business & Management at the same university. Moreover, she is affiliated to the Centre for Innovative Medical Technology at Odense University Hospital in southern Denmark, where she acts as Senior Researcher, PhD Supervisor, and Member of the Research Committee setting the direction for research concerning artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital health technologies.

Her own research revolves mainly around opportunities and barriers to development, implementation, and adoption of emerging technologies, such as drones and digital health technology. She has initiated, coordinated, and contributed to a range of research and innovation projects focusing on, e.g., mapping various needs for and barriers to widespread health drone logistics, implementing digital pathology, advising start-ups on their commercialisation strategy, and developing future scenarios for emerging technology.

She is educated as architect and industrial designer, has worked in different industries as product developer and as Head of Design and New Product Development, and she has co-founded and led a start-up.

For more information: https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/persons/mhf

Laura Hochstenbach is an assistant professor in the field of health and digital innovation at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the development, evaluation, and implementation of digital innovations, particularly in hospital care. Through close collaboration with patients and (healthcare) professionals from various disciplines, she strives to align theoretical insights with the needs and wishes of daily practice. She is partially seconded to the Healthcare and Innovation Lab at Maastricht UMC+, co-supervises several PhD students, and serves as a module coordinator in the new Master program Health and Digital Transformation.

Rachel Knevel is an ass. prof at the Rheumatology Department of the LUMC working as clinician and scientist. During her PhD she studied the genetics of phenotypic characteristics of rheumatoid arthritis. To further specialize in bioinformatics, she was a research fellow at the Raychaudhuri lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical school from 2016-2018. After that, she rejoined prof. Tom Huizinga’s Department of Rheumatology at the Leiden University Medical Centre, where she initiated her research group focusing on early disease differentiation and the identification of homogeneous subsets in patients with rheumatic disease by integrating the “big data” of electronic health records with genetic information.” 

Matthias Diener is an independent product and innovation consultant in the healthcare and healthtech sector. He has contributed to the development of DTx products, patient engagement formats in rheumatology, telemedicine infrastructure, and LLM-based chatbots and automation workflows for pharmaceutical companies, patient organizations, and healthtech scale-ups. Currently, he is focused on building Pave Health Labs, a venture and product studio that helps healthcare players develop and implement AI-driven workflows and products.  

Thomas Lenzen is a digitally minded medical doctor and biostatistician working at the intersection of clinical practice, digital health, and data science. As Head of Medicine and Research at Fimo Health, Thomas‘ focus is to create empowering digital ecosystems that go beyond traditional healthcare solutions, enabling patients with chronic diseases to thrive

Tjardo Daniël Maarseveen is a PhD student at the Rheumatology Department of Leiden University Medical Center, supervised by Rachel Knevel and Erik van den Akker. He holds a joint master’s degree in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology from the Vrije Universiteit (VU) and University of Amsterdam (UvA). While initially focused on bioinformatics, Tjardo shifted his interest toward clinical research. His primary research goal is to improve patient care through early identification and better stratification of musculoskeletal diseases by building tools that can be applied in practice.

Tjardo’s research began with an internship at LUMC, focusing on extracting diagnoses from unstructured free-text data. He then shifted to studying the clinical heterogeneity of rheumatoid arthritis, by applying multi-modal clustering techniques on electronic health records to refine the disease taxonomy and support personalized treatment, which earned recognition as a hot topic at a bioinformatics congress.

Lately, Tjardo has returned to natural language processing, attempting to predict musculoskeletal diseases before patients visit a physician by analyzing referral letters written by the general practitioner.

Tjardo’s research interests include digital medicine, musculoskeletal care, natural language processing and large language models. He regularly collaborates with European partners as part of the European SPIDeRR and SQUEEZE consortium.

Professor Ng (Fai) is a global leader in Sjögren’s syndrome and fatigue research. He is a Consultant Professor of Clinical Trials at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the director of the NRB Clinical Research Facility-University College Cork and the Head of HRB National Clinical Trials Office, Ireland. Fai’s current research focuses on personalised medicine and understanding the biological basis of fatigue including the use of sensor technology and medical devices to gain deeper understanding of this complex, disabling symptom as well as biomarker discovery. He leads several large international and national research consortia, including a €43M EU Innovative Medicines Initiative consortium – IDEA-FAST (www.idea-fast.eu) – aiming to identify cross-disease digital biomarkers of fatigue and sleep problems.

He previously worked as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Cambridge, U.K., and as an Applied Scientist at Amazon (Alexa AI). He has a BA in Computer Science and an MS in Computer Engineering from Dartmouth College, U.S., and a PhD in Applied Machine Learning from ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Dr. Line Raunsbæk Knudsen is a Clinical Nurse Specialist and Postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University Hospital’s Department of Rheumatology. She has been with the department since 2007, focusing on the development and education of nursing practices. After completing her PhD in Clinical Medicine in 2024, she resumed her clinical role, enhancing patient care and implementing evidence-based interventions.

In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Dr. Knudsen serves as an Improvement Advisor for Central Denmark Region, driving quality improvement initiatives across healthcare settings. She holds a Bachelor’s in Nursing (2007), a Master of Clinical Nursing (2013), and a PhD (2024) from Aarhus University.

Dr. Knudsen has extensive teaching experience in areas such as self-management of chronic rheumatic diseases, patient education, tele-health, and healthcare quality. She has taught nurses, nursing students, medical students, and other healthcare providers.

Active in professional committees, Dr. Knudsen is a board member of the Danish Interdisciplinary Rheumatology Forum (2018–present) and serves on the Educational Subcommittee of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (2023–present).

Mike Rosenbluth, PhD, is the founder and CEO of Swing Therapeutics. Swing develops digital therapeutics and is a telehealth platform for fibromyalgia and other primary pain and rheumatologic diseases. Mike holds a Doctorate Degree in biomedical engineering from UC Berkeley and UCSF and a BS and MS degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. He has been dedicated throughout his career to translating innovation in healthcare with a focus on delivering better care for underserved diseases. 

Technology director at the Laboratory for Intelligent Global Health and Humanitarian Response Technologies (LiGHT) in EPFL/Yale.

I am the Chief of the Rheumatology Section at the SFVAMC, Professor of Medicine (In Residence) in the Division of Rheumatology at UCSF, and core faculty in the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy. I am a practicing rheumatologist and physician scientist with training in epidemiology, outcomes research, and quality improvement. I co-direct the Quality and Informatics Lab, a multidisciplinary group of trainees, faculty, and staff, whose mission is to improve patient outcomes and reduce disparities in rheumatology. My research focuses on using “big data” and health information technology (IT) to identify and improve gaps in quality and safety in the care of patients with rheumatic diseases. My research program has been continually federally funded: I am currently principal investigator (PI) for an HSR&D QUERI – “Measurement Science QUERI” (I50 HX003266) at the SFVA; I am also currently co-PI for an R01 from NIH/NIAMS (R01AR079566) and PI for the Data Analytic Center for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) RISE national patient registry. Key areas of focus include developing, validating, and implementing quality and safety measures locally and nationally; health services research to identify and systematically address disparities in health care for patients with rheumatic conditions; and creating health IT solutions, including new electronic health record (EHR)-enabled dashboards and workflows, to drive improvements in clinical care.

Dr. Patrick-Pascal Strunz is a rheumatologist at the clinic of medicine II of the University Hospital of Wuerzburg. His current research focuses on axial spondyloarthritis and mobile health applications in the context of axial spondyloarthritis.

Prof. dr. Astrid van Tubergen is a rheumatologist and clinical epidemiologist working at Maastricht UMC+, the Netherlands. Her research line focuses on optimising patient care in daily practice. By evaluating treatment results, practice performance and patient experiences, she aims to validate (existing) outcome measures in practice and to reveal areas for improvement in care provision. Furthermore, she experiments with digital solutions to increase efficiency of care and to enhance patients’ engagement with their own treatment.

Jeffrey van der Ven is a fourth year PhD-candidate at the Sint Maartenskliniek in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In this role he focuses on identification of key factors influencing use and implementation of supported self-management eHealth interventions, specifically in people suffering from gout. With a background in Medical Biology – Specialisation in Science, Management and Innovation, he is determined on performing innovative research with societal relevance and impact.

Dr. Lise Verhoef is epidemiologist and senior researcher at the Sint Maartenskliniek in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. As theme lead eHealth and person-centred care, her research focuses on the use of technology to improve and personalise care for patients with rheumatic diseases. She initiates innovative research projects, supervises several PhD students and is member of the eHealth working group from the Dutch Society for Rheumatology.

Emre is an Associate Professor of Rheumatology and epidemiologist at Sakarya University.

His main interests are rheumatoid arthritis and adult Still’s disease aside from his enthusiasm for editorial activities.

He is currently working on the applications of AI projects in the field of rheumatology and the ethical perspectives of AI.

Professor Bart van den Bemt is clinical pharmacist, clinical pharmacologist and senior clinical scientist at the departments of Pharmacy in the Sint Maartenskliniek and the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Bart is medical manager of the in- and outpatient pharmacy of the Sint Maartenskliniek and head of Research and Innovation of the same hospital.

Due to his professional experiences as community-, clinical-, outpatient- and formula-pharmacist Bart has extensive experience of pharmacy practice, the development of (digital) pharmaceutical care programs and development of educational programs. Bart also founded a new Dutch bachelor course Pharmaceutical Consultant and is member of several committees/boards on pharmacotherapy, education, pharmaceutical care and outpatient pharmacy. Bart was president of the European Society of Clinical Pharmacy and vice-president of the Dutch Association of Hospital Pharmacy. 

Bart’s research interests are focused on Personalized Pharmaceutical Care including medication adherence, e-health, medication review, therapeutic drug monitoring of biologicals, inflammatory pain, transitional care and medication wastage.

Dr. Karen Salomon is a rheumatologist and Associate Professor at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, MA, where she serves as the founding director of the Rheumatology Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Program and co-director of the new Inflammatory Arthritis Program.  Dr. Salomon also serves on the Board of Directors of the New England Rheumatology Society.  She is passionate about patient care and dedicated to projects that enhance the patient experience and clinical outcomes. Dr. Salomon is particularly focused on leveraging digital technology to optimize patient-centered care, with a mission to improve the lives of patients with arthritis. She also leads research initiatives in inflammatory arthritis and serves as teaching faculty for the UMass Chan rheumatology fellowship, UMass Chan Medical School, and UMass Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing.

Martin Welcker studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
As a member of the German National Academic Foundation, he received a scholarship abroad at the Institut Pasteur (Dept. Immunogéntétique in Paris, France) during a phase in which the PCR technique was established.
He completed his PhD on the topic of GSB knee prosthesis under Prof. Dr. F. W. Hagena.
During his postgraduate training he worked at the Rheumatism Unit of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, the Städt. Hospital Bogenhausen and the Technical University of Munich. He completed this with the recognition as a specialist in internal medicine (1996) and the recognition of the sub-specialty of rheumatology (97).
In addition, he acquired the additional qualifications of chiropractic and osteology DVO.
After working as a senior physician at the Rheumazentrum Oberammergau and at the Städt. Hospital Lainz (Vienna, CA Prof. J. Smolen), he took over a practice on the outskirts of Munich in 2004, originally run by a general internist.
With the goal of improving rheumatology care and based on his specialty, a rheumatology focus practice quickly emerged, which has been established as an MVZ for rheumatology since 2015.
In 2020, the MVZ was approved for ASV Rheumatology. In addition to the guideline-compliant “treat to target” concept in patient care, the focus of activities is on process optimization with digitalization of medicine, in order to allow more time for the patient, among other things, in the conversation in the sense of human medicine.
Thus his activities in the executive committee of the professional association of German rheumatologists and the cooperation in the AG IT/Digitalisierung of the BDRH as well as the cooperation in the AG Digitales of the DGRH counted to his tasks. Dr. Welcker is also involved in numerous national and international lectures and publications.