Our mission takes a global, experienced, talented and interdisciplinary team. We are proud of our expertise in machine learning, healthcare, regulatory and privacy.
Our Team
Meet the People Behind Pacmed
Willem Herter is one of the founders of Pacmed and as director within Pacmed mainly responsible for corporate affairs. He has a drive to make a social impact and developed a wide skill set and an in-depth understanding of complex data analysis methods.
Willems interest in social affairs already showed during his studies, when he founded a company in education, helping high school students. Furthermore, Willem was a member of the voluntary board of the Dutch Cancer Society, worked as data scientist for THNK: School for Creative Leadership and founded Waaromkiesjij.nl, an app that facilitates political engagement. After his participation on the National ThinkTank 2014 he founded Pacmed with Wouter and Hidde.
Willem studied Physics at the University of Amsterdam.
Wouter is one of the founders of Pacmed. Wouter combines his medical and mathematical background with creative and strategic thinking and loves bringing different people together to work on smart solutions to tackle health care’s greatest challenges.
Wouter has worked (on the bedside and behind computers) at University Medical Center Utrecht for five years. Furthermore, he has working experience in management consulting and has worked for a software start-up and a service platform for the elderly. Wouter participated in the Dutch National ThinkTank 2014 with Willem and Hidde.
Wouter studied Medicine in Utrecht and Computational Logic at the University of Amsterdam and Stanford University.
Hidde Hovenkamp is one of the directors of Pacmed, and mainly responsible for technology product management, regulatory and finance. Hidde combines project management skills with systematic thinking.
Before Pacmed Hidde already had many years of working experience as a data analytics consultant, where he focused on helping large organisations transition to a more data-driven way of working. In 2014 he met Wouter and Willem during the National ThinkTank of which Pacmed originated.
Hidde studied at University College Utrecht before doing a Master’s in Quantitative Finance and a Master in Econometrics at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.
Taco combines his medical background with consulting skills, to improve the efficiency and quality of care. At Pacmed, as Chief Growth Officer, Taco focuses on establishing large partnerships in hospital care and finding opportunities to expand the value Pacmed can bring for the healthcare system.
Taco has extensive working experience in strategy consulting. He worked 10 years at McKinsey & Co and 3 years at Gupta Strategists. He has led many data driven strategic and operational projects within healthcare.
Taco is trained as a medical doctor and holds a Bachelor's Degree in Medical Information Science.
As senior UX researcher, Suzanne always thinks from the perspective of the user, and asks questions continuously to ensure the best possible experience for the user is created. At Pacmed Suzanne represents the voice of the user by carrying out research during the whole product design process. This research varies from discovering the needs of users, usability testing of Pacmed Critical to uncovering possibilities where it can be improved.
Suzanne started her career as Psychology teacher at the University of Twente where she taught students in setting up and carrying out (UX) research. After this, she worked as senior UX researcher at ABN AMRO. In this role she carried out lots and different types of research: from explorative to validating research and from qualitative to quantitative research. Next to that, she matured and evolved the UX research within ABN AMRO.
Suzanne studied HBO Applied Psychology and finished her master Human Factors and Engineering Psychology at the University of Twente.
As a professional known for his exceptional accuracy and creativity, Marco finds satisfaction in tackling complex technical challenges. Founded on the principles of simplicity, beauty and sustainability, he thrives on harnessing these values in his work.
Marco's career path includes various roles such as software developer, contract manager and financial director. In all his endeavors, Marco embodies a passion for tackling challenges with a creative mindset, leaving an indelible mark on the organizations he serves.
Marco holds a bachelor's degree in Business Informatics.
Marijn Kroes is a curious and enthusiastic team-player motivated to make a positive impact on society with data-driven technology. At Pacmed he designs and manages strategic initiatives to help Pacmed realize its vision to get more health out of healthcare.
Marijn is a former data science consultant who both built AI solutions and managed implementation of data-driven solutions, including for healthcare. He is also a former assistant professor in cognitive neuroscience who led a team investigating neural mechanisms that allow the modification of emotional memory and decision-making, aiming to support the development of novel treatments for clinical disorders.
Marijn holds a PhD (Cum Laude) from the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, an MSc in Neuroscience & Cognition from Utrecht University, a BSc in Psychology from the University of Amsterdam, and was a postdoc at Universidad Politecnica Madrid and New York University.
As implementation manager Brian’s main responsibility is to guide hospitals in implementing Pacmed’s IC software into clinical practice throughout all phases of the implementation process.
Brian has a passion for healthcare – specifically in combination with innovation and digitalization – striving to keep healthcare affordable, sustainable and of the highest quality. Prior to working at Pacmed Brian has gained valuable experience in managing complex software implementations in the hospital setting as consultant of the Electronic Medical Record at Chipsoft. He’ll use his knowledge and experience to increasingly let patients, doctors and hospitals (healthcare systems) benefit from the application of machine learning in clinical practice.
Brian has a background in the health sciences and completed a Master’s Programme in Management and Entrepreneurship in the Health and Life Sciences (MPA) at the VU University Amsterdam.
Mattia Fornasa has extraordinary analytical and mathematical skills and the ability to explain complicated matters in a simple way. At Pacmed Mattia makes sure that our state-of-the-art machine learning models are scalable enough to be applied to multiple health care institutions.
Before moving to Amsterdam, Mattia has worked as a researcher in astrophysics for 8 years. In Amsterdam, he led an international research team investigating dark matter by applying machine learning on enormous volumes of gamma-ray data from satellites.
Mattia obtained a PhD in Theoretical Physics in his home country Italy.
Jim has a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam, and he has always been passionate about using his skills and knowledge to make an impact in healthcare. With his broad technical experience in machine learning and software engineering Jim will play an important role in ensuring that doctors can benefit as much as possible from Pacmed’s data-driven solutions.
At Pacmed, as Implementation Data Scientist, Jim focuses on delivering Pacmed Critical’s machine learning algorithms to the hospitals. An important part of this is tailoring the algorithm to each hospital, making sure it performs well in every hospital’s specific context.
As business developer, Steven builds partnerships with patients, health providers, payers and policymakers so they can benefit from the use of cutting-edge data science combined with deep medical expertise.
Starting in 2016, Steven has supported the market entry efforts of 100+ Dutch and international companies with healthcare-solutions. During this time he worked with national governments, hospitals, health insurers and other stakeholders in Europe, the United States, Asia & Latin America.
Steven has a degree in public administration and political science from the Radboud University Nijmegen.
Bas Vonk has a strong background in programming and engineering and a talent to understand and streamline complex systems. As senior data engineer, Bas builds and implements Pacmed’s decision support systems to make sure that Pacmed's algorithms can be used at the bedside and in the consultation room.
Before Pacmed, Bas worked as a software engineer at the educational tech start-up Dedact, where he made it to the position of tech lead.
Bas holds a Master’s in Econometrics of the University of Amsterdam.
Daan de Bruin has extensive and in-depth knowledge of data science. He joined Pacmed in an early stage and uses his expertise to lead Pacmed’s data science team building machine learning algorithms for Pacmed’s decision support software .
Before Pacmed, Daan was a senior data science consultant & data science trainer at analytics consultancy firm MIcompany. Daan studied Econometrics at the University of Amsterdam.
Leon has a background in Biomedical Engineering. As a product manager, Leon is enthusiastic about building bridges. This can be between, for example, healthcare and technology, but also between customer needs and developers. Innovation with impact is his biggest driver.
Leon has experience as a product manager for IT products that are used in healthcare. Before joining Pacmed, Leon worked at both smaller start-ups as a larger multinational company.
Leon holds a Master degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Delft university of technology.
Michele Tonutti combines his interests in academic, medical and social issues. At Pacmed, Michele works at the intersection of data science and engineering. He focuses on building scalable production-ready data pipelines and reusable code to train interpretable and reproducible state-of-the-art machine learning models.
After his studies Michele worked first as a graduate research engineer in deep learning at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, where he researched domain adaptation methods applied to assisted-driving vehicles. He then moved to Amsterdam where he joined Bunq as a data scientist.
Michele obtained a Master's of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering and a Master's of Research in Medical Robotics & Image-Guided Intervention at Imperial College London (both with distinction).
Carsten van Weelden is an experienced data scientist with a goal to democratise data science and analysis tools for medical professionals. At Pacmed Carsten will use his skills to contribute to a future where each treatment and interaction with a patient contributes a datapoint to our collective knowledge about medical treatments and increases future medical effectiveness for similar patients.
Carsten worked as a machine learning/research engineer for Textkernel where he built deep learning models for sequence labeling and representation learning. After this, he worked as data scientist for Trivago where he learned to complete full-loop data science projects under strict time constraints.
Carsten studied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam where he focused on machine learning for NLP and computer vision.
With his background in Artificial Intelligence and his entrepreneurial mindset, Hanne has the right combination of skills to translate technical opportunities into useful products that fulfil customer needs. On top of that, his passion for software engineering drives him to deliver the cleanest code in the most beautiful structures. Within Pacmed he has a broad role with a focus on migrating to the cloud.
Next to years of freelancing and getting his own start-up off the ground, Hanne also has a lot of experience in the corporate world.
Hanne holds a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence of the University of Amsterdam.
Geert Klop combines extensive experience as a machine learning engineer, passion for software engineering and a medical background to create valuable data science products to solve complex medical problems. At Pacmed, Geert will focus on designing and building scalable and maintainable pipelines for Pacmed’s products.
Before Pacmed, Geert worked as a machine learning engineer consultant at Xomnia. There he worked with many clients to support them in their data needs, from data science to data engineering.
Geert has a master degree in Biomedical Sciences and Science Based Business at the University of Leiden.
Marco is a Senior Software Engineer with two decades worth of experience. On top of that he now specializes in Machine Learning Engineering. He has a strong background in traditional and scientific software development in ie. C# and Python.
As a Machine Learning specialist he also has broad ML knowledge ranging from NLP, Computer Vision to time series forecasting.
He uses all these skills to help Pacmed roll out Pacmed Critical and develop new modules for it.
His motto: ‘Never stop learning’
Olivier Thijssen has a background in advanced engineering and econometrics. As a data scientist at Pacmed , he focuses on creating value for doctor and patient through the use of machine learning. He developed, for instance, a model for personalizing the treatment of prostate cancer with Antoni van Leeuwenhoek.
He has an active sport life and became Dutch champion under 23 with competitive rowing. During his studies he gained experience in data science projects in aviation at both KLM and Qantas Airways.
Olivier did a Master’s in Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft and subsequently completed a master's degree in Econometrics at Tilburg University (with distinction).
Prathiksha Singh has a background in Mechatronics Engineering along with industry experience in software and data engineering. She’s deeply passionate about utilising technology to improve and uplift society. At Pacmed, Prathiksha focuses on the design, development and maintenance of scalable data pipelines for all Pacmed products.
Prathiksha brings a breadth of experience from occupying diverse technical roles in a number of industries. Previously, Prathiksha worked as a full-stack software engineer at a South African market-place scale-up, SweepSouth. She’s also worked as a data engineer on an e-Commerce platform at Nedbank, and as a cyber security consultant at F-Secure Consulting serving clients in the banking, telecommunication and insurance domains.
Prathiksha has a BSc. degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and is currently pursuing a MSc. Eng degree focused on Machine Learning and Image Processing at UCT.
Sofia has a background in Computer Science and Machine Learning and enjoys solving problems that have a social impact. As a Machine Learning Engineer at Pacmed, she contributes to the development of scalable pipelines and implementation of machine learning models in multiple health care institutions.
Previously, Sofia worked as a consultant, developing ML models for various industries and later on joined the healthcare sector during her time at SkinVision. She has a user-centric mindset, focusing on delivering value to users when building AI solutions
Sofia obtained a MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam.
Leonardo Tavares is a cloud engineer that is enthusiastic about using technology to make lives better. At Pacmed Leonardo uses his skills to create, maintain and optimise the cloud infrastructure powering our products, using best practices and industry-leading technologies to make it secure, scalable and cost effective.
Leonardo worked as tech lead at an internal startup in a major tech consulting company in Brazil, where he was responsible for defining the technology stack, designing the software architecture and implementing the underlying infrastructure of its AIaaS offering.
Leonardo studied Computer Engineering at the Federal University of São Carlos where he focused on MLOps and hardware-accelerated algorithms.
Sophie has a background in biomedical research and programming. As a researcher in the hospital she observed the impact of technology on the improvement of care and well-being of the patient. Since then, she has been passionate about improving healthcare in this way.
Within Pacmed, as a front-end engineer, Sophie programs the part of the decision-support software that is visible to the intensivists, providing them with an overview of the information needed to make the right decision right at the bedside.
Before joining Pacmed, Sophie worked as a software consultant on an eHealth application aimed at measuring heart rate and blood pressure. In this role she was in constant contact with doctors, designers and developers. It was the interaction with developers that sparked her interest, which led her to take a course in full-stack web development at Ironhack.
Sophie graduated with a master's degree in Biomedical Sciences in combination with a master's degree in Science, Business & Policy from the University of Groningen.
Arjen Mol is trained as a medical doctor and has a lot of experience analyzing medical data. He combines interests in medicine, science, technology and society. At Pacmed he is involved in the upscaling of Pacmed products throughout different hospitals, the harmonization and medical validation of datasets, the design of new Pacmed products and their clinical scientific evaluation.
Before starting at Pacmed, Arjen obtained a MD (cum laude) and a PhD in medicine (thesis: Advancing orthostatic hypotension diagnostics). He worked at several ICU and cardiology departments in the Netherlands.
Chris Sauer is a clinician-scientist working to improve patient care by analyzing real-world data and deriving optimal treatment policies from it. He combines his residency in Internal Medicine/Hematology & Oncology with research into applied machine learning at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, both at Essen University Hospital. Key areas include sepsis treatment, data sharing and causal inference.
Chris is an affiliated researcher at MIT Critical Data and drives multiple research projects. Furthermore, he contributes as speaker and mentor to international datathons and conferences. Chris holds a M.D. from Maastricht University, an M.P.H. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the Free University Amsterdam. He won a three-years DFG co-funded clinician scientist program and is currently establishing his own research group at Essen University Hospital.
Chris is an affiliated researcher at MIT Critical Data and drives multiple research projects. Furthermore, he contributes as speaker and mentor to international datathons and conferences. Chris holds a M.D. from Maastricht University, an M.P.H. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from the Free University Amsterdam. He won a three-years DFG co-funded clinician scientist program and is currently establishing his own research group at Essen University Hospital.
Giovanni Cinà specializes in connecting the potential of new technologies to social impact. He has a keen interest in the conditions of responsible use of modern Machine Learning methods in the field of healthcare. At Pacmed Giovanni leads the research team, shaping the agenda of the department and contributing to various research projects on medical AI. He also holds a part-time appointment as Assistant Professor in Responsible Medical AI at the University of Amsterdam.
Giovanni is one of the first employees of Pacmed, having extensive working experience as a medical data scientist on the prognosis of chronic diseases in primary care. His formation comprised Philosophy, Mathematics and applied AI: he obtained a MSc in Philosophy of Science from LSE and a PhD in Mathematical Logic at the University of Amsterdam.