CaRe Award 2018 for Ben Wijnen
The CaRe Award 2018 has been awarded to Ben Wijnen. Wijnen won the prize for his PhD dissertation Pleidooi voor betere meetinstrumenten voor mensen met epilepsie; zelfmanagement bij patiënten met epilepsie kosteneffectief (‘Call for better measurement instruments for people with epilepsy: self-management in patients with epilepsy cost-effective’). The dissertation concludes that more insight is needed into measuring quality of life in patients with epilepsy. The jury called his research “very relevant for first-line care providers, with an emphasis on the patient”.
Personalised care
Everyone is unique, and that holds, too, for individuals’ consumption of healthcare. Personal preferences play a role in the effect of treatment. Being aware of the patient’s preferences is thus an important part of working towards care that puts the patient centre stage. In his dissertation, Wijnen describes the current methods and studies used in charting patient preferences. He also addresses the economic evaluation of treatments. An important conclusion of his research is that by using better measurement instruments than those in the current national guidelines, the effects of current and new treatments for people with epilepsy could be better mapped.
Researcher
Wijnen currently works as a health economist at the Trimbos Institute and postdoc researcher in the Department of Health Services Research at Maastricht University’s CAPHRI research school. His research was conducted in collaboration with the Kempenhaeghe Academic Centre for Epileptology. The article on his research was among the ‘most shared critical reviews of epilepsy’ in 2017.
Award
CaRe is the national research school bringing together the VUMC and the AMC in Amsterdam, Nivel in Utrecht, the RadboudUMC in Nijmegen and Maastricht’s MUMC+. The CaRe Award is presented annually by an independent jury and the CaRe board to the PhD candidate who wrote the best dissertation of the previous year. Around 200 dissertations were completed under the auspices of CaRe in 2017.
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