From the field to the future of health records
I’m a doctor who builds. My career has taken me from a refugee camp in Chad to a vaccine lab and the port of Rotterdam, where I worked as a GP and port physician. Today I’m the founder and CEO of Enigma Global eHealth. All along I’ve been following one question: what happens to a patient’s health information when they cross a border?
Why I’m building Enigma Global eHealth
People move. Seafarers, travellers, migrants, aid workers. Their medical records rarely move with them. I’ve seen the consequences from both sides of the consultation room: patients who couldn’t explain their own history, and doctors forced to start from zero. This startup is building the trusted health record for people who cross borders. It is an international record, built on the openEHR standard, that belongs to the patient and can be read by any clinician, anywhere. Trust is the foundation: patients need to trust that they decide who sees their data, and doctors need to trust that what they read is accurate and complete. We’re starting with seafarers, the people I spent five years caring for at the Port Health Centre in Rotterdam.
Starting with seafarers
Around 2.57 million seafarers keep the world’s merchant fleet of more than 85,000 ships running. Yet their health records are spread across doctors, hospitals and telemedical services in many countries, often as a folder of paper documents. When a seafarer falls ill at sea or in a foreign port, the treating doctor often has no information on medications, allergies or medical history. That leads to repeated tests, delayed decisions and longer time ashore. And seafarers themselves have little say over who sees their data. I presented an openEHR-based approach for global seafarers at EHRCON26 in Amsterdam, and explained why in my guest blog for openEHR International: Why 2.57M seafarers deserve better access to their own health data.
Years in the field
After medical school I trained in surgery, gynaecology, obstetrics and traumatology, and completed the Tropical Medicine and Global Health course at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam. During that time I also chaired TROIE (now VAIGO), the Dutch association of global health doctors in training.
In 2003 I started work as a doctor in Tropical Medicine and International Health at a rural 50-bed hospital in Ghana. In 2005 I joined Médecins Sans Frontières in Chad, where I was the only doctor in a camp of 17,000 refugees from Darfur. In spring 2005 a PBS crew filmed our work at Farchana camp for Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge, a six-part documentary series by WGBH/NOVA and Vulcan Productions, narrated by Brad Pitt. PBS also profiled me as one of its Global Health Champions. In 2006, after the Indian Ocean tsunami, I worked in Aceh for The Mentor Initiative. There I trained health workers in malaria and dengue and helped prevent a malaria outbreak in the flooded region. Trouw reported on our work there.
The Dutch Association for Global Health and Tropical Medicine highlighted these missions in its Into the World campaign. During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, Trouw interviewed me for a front-page article on the shortage of Ebola doctors.
Doctor and researcher
Back in the Netherlands I trained as a general practitioner. Alongside my GP work, I completed a PhD at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine, of Leiden University Medical Centre on malaria vaccines. I ran clinical trials in which healthy volunteers were immunised through the bites of mosquitoes infected with malaria tropica (Plasmodium falciparum). This research won first prize in the Elsevier Clinical Research Award at the ASTMH annual meeting in Washington, D.C., USA, in 2013.
Leadership
I completed the Executive MBA at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, where I was named Ambassador of the 2022 cohort. My reflective autobiography, written for the Personal Leadership Development (PLD) track of the programme, was regarded as a masterpiece of reflection and leadership. It was shared with all 108 students of the international cohort as an example of personal growth. I give lectures and workshops on leadership for professionals in health and business, using my network and skills from my Executive MBA.
Today
As founder and CEO of Enigma Global eHealth, I work with the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, and the startup company has gone through the UtrechtInc incubator and joined Barcelona Health Hub. At 4YFN (4 Years From Now), the tech startup event of Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, one of the world’s largest tech and IT events, I joined the Barcelona Health Hub panel “AI & Healthcare: Enhancing Privacy, Efficiency & Patient Care”, bringing the perspective from openEHR and patient data. I have twice been part of the official Dutch trade delegation in tech to Mobile World Congress: in 2024 led by Minister of Economic Affairs Micky Adriaansens, and in 2025 led by Minister of Economic Affairs Dirk Beljaarts. Prince Constantijn van Oranje, of Techleap.nl, is officially connected to the Netherlands Pavilion.
Enigma Global eHealth is a partner of the Dutch Global Health Hub, an initiative of the Netherlands Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. I’m an Industry Partner of openEHR International, which featured my plans in an interview. I also initiated the digitalisation of the WHO International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis, the yellow vaccination booklet (ICVP), in the Netherlands. In May 2025 I presented this work on the main stage of CISTM19 in New Orleans, the world congress of the International Society of Travel Medicine, in the opening plenary with my talk “E-health in travel medicine: Example of the WHO International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis”.
I’m Vice-President of the Federation of European Societies for Tropical Medicine and International Health (FESTMIH), and active in WHO, EU and Dutch global health networks.
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