Speakers

Prof. Dr. Johnny Deurinck is a medical innovator: he is researching new treatment methods for brain tumours, and he is also active in research into new technological evolutions in neurosurgery, with an emphasis on implementation of Augmented Reality. Prof. Dr. Johnny Duerinck studied medicine at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and continued his training at UZ Brussel, where he has been working as a neurosurgeon since 2013. He completed his neurosurgery training at the UZ Brussel, where he concentrated on the (both surgical and non-operative) treatment of brain tumours since the beginning of his training. He also spent several times in foreign centres at Montpellier and Milan to learn techniques used in the surgery of brain lesions located close to functionally important brain areas. Furthermore, he has an interest in complex spinal neurosurgery using both minimally invasive and open techniques.

Alica Daly is the Senior Policy Officer in the IP and Frontier Technologies Division at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). She is responsible for coordinating policy discussions in relation to frontier technologies and data in the context of IP and innovation.

Alica graduated with a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Melbourne. She subsequently joined IP Australia as a patent examiner in 2007. In 2014, Alica became the first Head of Patent Analytics at IP Australia.

Alica has worked at WIPO since 2017 in a number of roles. She worked as a research fellow in the Department for Economics and Data Analytics on a project about innovation in the mining industry. She also worked in the Innovation and Knowledge Infrastructure Department coordinating a project to assist developing countries improve their capacity in technology transfer and commercialization across the innovation value chain. 

Shireen is a seasoned healthcare leader with over 15 years of experience in care system redesign, payment reform, health policy, and AI/tech. She has worked with state and federal governments, providers, foundations, and life sciences companies across the US, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and has considerable business development/sales, strategy, and implementation expertise. Shireen is deeply passionate about increasing access and improving health outcomes for underserved and underrepresented populations. In her free time Shireen is an avid chef, rescue animal volunteer, trauma-certified yoga instructor, and New York State Department of Health-certified sexual assault and domestic violence counselor. Shireen is a member of the Atlantik Brücke Young Leaders Program and holds a BA in psychology from Barnard College of Columbia University as well as a MSc in international public health and gender studies from Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Andrea is the CEO of Confinis AG, a leading Swiss regulatory consulting firm specialized in medical devices, IVD and combination products. He is a serial entrepreneur – he created and sold two neurotech companies, Intento SA and braincredible SA. As a consultant and as a manager he had the pleasure to serve in small and large entities, always promoting startups and innovation. By training, Andrea is an electronic engineer (BSc) and biomedical engineer (MSc) with a PhD from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) for the research activity in Neurotechnology for Brain-Repair and Brain-Computer Interfaces. He has in-depth knowledge in Biostatistics, Machine Learning, Signal Processing, and Data Analysis.
He holds a honorary appointment as President of the Basel Young Executives (YEX) of the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Switzerland (CCIS).

Séverine is a lawyer in the Tech & Data and Life-sciences practice groups at Taylor Wessing. She advises clients on contractual and regulatory matters in these areas. She specialises in information technology, data protection law, intellectual property and regulatory life sciences. Séverine assists and advises clients active in various technology sectors and has particular expertise in life sciences. She handles contentious and non-contentious IT and IP related matters, including the drafting and negotiating complex R&D, license and other strategic collaboration agreements. She also advises clients on regulatory matters (IVDR/MDR, EU Data Act, EU AI Act, GDPR), transparency requirements and advertising rules specific to the life-sciences sector.

Christel De Maeyer has been a part of the technology industry since the 80’s and holds an International Master degree in Communication Science, New Media, and Society in Europe (VUB).  She has been actively involved in education and been employed in academia for the past 13 years, before she had her own company. Christel is a PhD candidate at TU/e, at User Centred Engineering Group, Department Future Everyday, Netherlands. Finalizing her PhD thesis ‘From personal health informatics to the notion of a human digital twin’.

Christel De Maeyer is a member of the Peace Innovation lab, part of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University in California. She collaborated on behavior change through technology; her focus was on wearable sensor devices in healthcare. 

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Peace Innovation Network Member Profile - Christel De Maeyer

Dr. Shada Alsalamah is an Associate Professor of Global Digital Health, Information Systems Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She is a Technical Officer in the Department of Digital Health and Innovation, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. She is a Principle Investigator, Artificial Intelligence Center, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In addition, she serves on a number of national and international boards and working groups including, but not limited to, the OECD Blockchain Expert Policy Advisory Board, Paris, France; The International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications, Brussels, Belgium; ITU/WHO FG-Artificial Intelligence for Health (AI4H) Regulatory Considerations Working Group (WG-RC), Geneva, Switzerland; ITU/WHO FG-AI4H Dental Diagnostics and Digital Dentistry Topic Group (TG-Dental), Geneva, Switzerland; IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy; The Saudi Association for Information Security, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and The International Network for Forensic Odontology.

Dr. Ruben Casado Arroyo is Professor of Medicine and Director, Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory, Université Libre de Bruxelles- Erasme Hospital (Brussels, Belgium). He holds a MSc Health Economics, Policy and Management at London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). His areas of interest are Cardiac arrhythmias (atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, atrial tachycardia, ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, Brugada syndrome, Long QT). Devices (Pacemakers, defibrillators). Coronary Care (Myocardial infarction, cardiac ischemia). Intensive Care Medicine. Computer methods in cardiovascular image processing, computational knowledge discovery, artificial intelligence, intelligent data analysis, bio-signal processing, signal modelling, predictive models development, e-health and mobile applications, and communications within and between hospitals.

Dr. Daniel Truhn is a physicist and medical doctor by training. He studied medicine and physics in Aachen and London. After completing his board-certification in radiology he currently serves as a senior physician at the University Hospital of Aachen and a professor for artificial intelligence. His research group works on the development of AI models with a focus on application in clinical practice.

Dr. Anne Schmitt is a digital health advocate with a rich background in UX research, usability engineering, and digital medical product development. She has worked in multiple digital health startups with varying levels of maturity, ranging from early-stage to more established companies. Her expertise spans leading UX teams, developing user-centred design strategies, and navigating complex regulatory environments to create impactful digital health solutions. Anne set up the usability engineering practice at Ada Health, an AI-based symptom checker, and contributed to the successful certification efforts of Ada’s digital medical device portfolio when MDR came into effect. She brings a holistic approach to digital health, integrating technical knowledge with a deep understanding of user needs to drive innovation and usability in digital health solutions.

Oscar Freyer is a Researcher at Dresden Technical University, Germany, specializing in Medical Device Regulatory Science at the EKFZ for Digital Health. His work primarily revolves around the CYMEDSEC project, where he serves as Scientific and Technical Manager, focusing on enhancing cybersecurity for connected medical devices in healthcare. 

Oscar's journey into research began at the Charité School of Medicine Berlin, culminating in a degree in medicine in 2021. He co-founded WhalesDontFly, merging his medical expertise with game development and gamification consultancy to innovate healthcare solutions. His recent contributions to Medical Extended Reality (MXR) and serious games highlight the intersection of technology and clinical practice. Oscar is passionate about health tech, gamification, and the transformative power of AI in healthcare, driving forward significant advancements in digital health and cybersecurity.

Dr. Paul Quinn is a Professor at Law in the faculty of Law and Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). In VUB, he is directing the Health and Ageing Law Lab (HALL). He is an expert on legal and ethical issues related to the use of health data, both in healthcare and scientific research. He participates in numerous international and national research consortia that are delivering cutting-edge research on these issues. Paul is also an expert on issues relating to stigmatization and discrimination, having written a thesis and published a monograph in this area. Before becoming a legal scholar, he trained as a barrister in the UK. Paul specializes in multi-disciplinary research, having a degree in biochemistry in addition to his legal qualifications. He is also a member of the University Hospital Ethics Committee for Research and the university’s Ethical Committee for Social Science Research.

Dr. Stephen Gilbert is Professor of Medical Device Regulatory Science at the Else Kröner Fresenius Center for Digital Health, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany where he teaches and conducts research on regulatory science with a team of colleagues. He worked in senior MedTech and Digital Heath roles in the industry for 5 years, before returning to academia in 2022. His research goal is to advance the regulatory science of software as a medical device and AI-enabled medical devices. Innovative digital approaches to healthcare must be accompanied by innovative approaches in regulation to ensure speed to market, to maximum access of patients to life-saving treatments whilst ensuring safety on the market. My main research interests are in: (i) data sharing and the European Health Data Space; (ii) approaches to market approval of adaptive AI-enabled medical devices; (iii) drug<->digital/AI-enabled medical device product realisation; (iv) digital/virtual twins: as an organising concept of the future of healthcare.

Dr. Liam Quinn is a geneticist who did his PhD at University College London and has gone on to have postdoctoral research positions at the University of Copenhagen and University Hospital Zealand in Denmark. His research interests centre on using computational genetics approaches to investigating the impacts of disease epidemics on populations. Research projects have ranged from the kuru epidemic in Papua New Guinea, to the Rinderpest pandemic amongst Cape buffalo in Africa and currently studying the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on the Danish population.

Mindy Duffourc is an Assistant Professor of Private Law and a member of the Law and Tech Lab at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She researches in the area of comparative health law and technology. Her work has appeared in JAMA, NPJ Digital Medicine, American Journal of Law and Medicine, Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law, Harvard International Law Review Blog, Indiana Health Law Review, and Springer’s Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the Law book, and is forthcoming in the Stanford Technology Law Review. She was previously an Assistant Professor of Lawyering at NYU and a Lecturer in civil procedure and health law at the University of Passau in Germany. She also served as an Alexander von Humboldt German Chancellor Fellow conducting comparative health law and risk management research and as a Joachim Herz Fellow at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg researching liability for AI in medicine.