Core faculty
Marlien Varnfield obtained a BSc Honours degree from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and an MSc (focusing on periodontal diseases) from the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her PhD research at the Department of Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Australia, focused on evaluating the potential for large scale implementation of health-care interventions utilising Information and Communication Technologies.
Marlien is currently a Research Scientist and Mobile Health Systems Team Leader at the Australian e-Health Research Centre, Health & Biosecurity, CSIRO. Her research focuses on the development, delivery and large scale implementation of tele- and mobile health services. Specifically, she has extensive experience in care models designed to deliver support in the self-management of chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes to patients, at home. Through involvement and management of numerous research projects, she has studied innovative ways in ambulatory monitoring and management for best health outcomes, creating new business and clinical service models using telehealth for management of chronic diseases, and changing process models to accommodate best practice care for monitoring patients remotely. In addition to numerous national and international conference presentations, Marlien has extensively published in the field of chronic disease management and mobile health.
Marlien is a professional member of the European Society of Cardiology and also member of ACRA (Australian Cardiovascular Health and Rehabilitation Association) and HISA (Health Informatics Society of Australia). She was a faculty member at the previous European Congress on eCardiology and eHealth that was held in Berlin in 2016.
Marlien VARNFIELD
Enrico G. Caiani (MS 1996, PhD 2000) is Associate professor at the Electronics, Information and Bioengineering Dpt., Politecnico di Milano, Italy, where he teaches the classes of “Biomedical Image Processing Laboratory” and “E-health: methods and applications”, and he is member of the PhD Board in Biomedical Engineering. In 2002, he received the Rosanna Degani Young Investigator Award (Computers in Cardiology Society) e in 2007 the A.E. Weyman Young Investigator Finalist Award (American Society of Echocardiography).
Currently, he serves as Chairperson (16-18) for the e-Cardiology Working Group of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), he is part of the Advocacy group of ESC, and represents the ESC at the European Commission eHealth Stakeholder group.
Currently, his main research interests include e-health solutions and m-health applications in the field of cardiology.
Enrico CAIANI
Name : Paul AC Dendale, date of birth : 2 april 1961
Medical studies at the University of Antwerp from 1979 till 1986
Special licence in Sports Medicine at the University of Brussels (VUB) 1987-1988
Full time interim assistant in sports medicine at the University of Brussels (VUB) from januari 1988 till june 1988
Specialisation in Cardiology at the University Hospital of the University of Brussels (VUB) from august 1988 till august 1993, cardiologist since 5/8/93
Specialisation in Cardiac Rehabilitation at the University Hospital of the VUB completed 31/9/97
Appointed Resident Cardiologist at the University Hospital of the University of Brussels from 1993 till 1997
Appointed Consultant Cardiologist (part time) at the University Hospital of the VUB from 1/10/97 until 1/9/1999
Appointed Consultant Cardiologist (part time) at the University Hospital of the University of Antwerp (UZA) from 1/9/99 until 1/9/2002
Appointed as Cardiologist at the Virga Jesse Hospital in Hasselt from 1/10/97
Head of the Department of Cardiology Jessa Hospital from 1/1/2011
Professor of Cardiovascular pathophysiology and professor of Cardiovascular Rehabilitation at the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University from 2008
Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and the Belgian Society of Cardiology
President of the commission for accreditation of rehabilitation specialists
President elect of the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation of the ESC (2016-2018), now the European Association for Preventive Cardiology (EAPC)
Secretary of the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation of the ESC (2012 – 2016)
Past President and past secretary of the Belgian Working Group on Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Belgian Society of Cardiology
Past board member of the Belgian Society of Cardiology
Member of the Nucleus of the Section on Cardiac Rehabilitation of the EACPR (2006-2012)
Web master of the EACPR from 2012-2016
A selection of recent publications in the field of rehabilitation, sports and exercise
1) Hansen D, Dendale P, Berger J, Onkelinx S, Reyckers I, Hermans A, Vaes J, Reenaers V, Meeusen R : Importance of exercise training session duration in the rehabilitation of coronary artery disease patients. Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil 2008;15:453-9.
2) Dendale P, Dereppe H, De Sutter C Laruelle J, Vaes J, Lamotte M, Deroeck A, et al Position paper of the Belgian Working Group on Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation : cardiovascular rehabilitation Acta Cardiologica 2008;63:673-681
3) M Piepoli, U Corrà, W Benzer, B Bjarnason-Wehrens, P Dendale, D Gaita, H McGee, M Mendes, J Niebauer, A Olsen Zwisler, JP Schmid. Secondary prevention through cardiac rehabilitation: from knowledge to implementation. A position paper from the Cardiac Rehabilitation Section of the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil 2010:17;1-17
4) Bjarnason-Wehrens B, McGee H, Zwisler AD, Piepoli MF, Benzer W, Schmid JP, Dendale P, Pogosova NG, Zdrenghea D, Niebauer J, Mendes M; on behalf of the Cardiac Rehabilitation Section European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. Cardiac rehabilitation in Europe: results from the European Cardiac Rehabilitation Inventory Survey. Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil. 2010 Aug;17(4):410-8
5) Massimo F Piepoli, Ugo Corrà, Werner Benzer, Birna Bjarnason-Wehrens, Paul Dendale, Dan Gaita, Hannah McGee, Miguel Mendes, Josef. Secondary prevention through cardiac rehabilitation: physical activity counselling and exercise training. Eur Heart J 2010;31:1967-1974
6) Dendale P, De Keulenaer G, Troisfontaines P, Weytjens C, Mullens W, Elegeert I, Ector B, Houbrechts M, Willekens K, Hansen D. Effect of a telemonitoring-facilitated collaboration between general practitioner and heart failure clinic on mortality and rehospitalization rates in severe heart failure: the TEMA-HF 1 (TElemonitoring in the MAnagement of Heart Failure) study. Eur J Heart Fail. 2012 Mar;14(3):333-40
7) Zwisler AD, Bjarnason-Wehrens B, McGee H, Piepoli MF, Benzer W, Schmid JP, Dendale P, Pogosova NG, Zdrenghea D, Niebauer J, Mendes M, Doherty P, Garcia-Porrero E, Rauch B, Gaita D. Can level of education, accreditation and use of databases in cardiac rehabilitation be improved? Results from the European Cardiac Rehabilitation Inventory Survey. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2012 Apr;19(2):143-50
8) Dendale P, Frederix I. The future of telerehabilitation: empowerment of patients versus long distance supervision. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2013 Jun;20(2 Suppl):17
9) Frederix I, Hansen D, Coninx K, Vandervoort P, Vandijck D, Hens N, Van Craenenbroeck E, Van Driessche N, Dendale P. Medium-Term Effectiveness of a Comprehensive Internet-Based and Patient-Specific Telerehabilitation Program With Text Messaging Support for Cardiac Patients: Randomized Controlled Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2015 Jul 23;17(7):e185. doi: 10.2196/jmir.4799.
10) Frederix I, Hansen D, Coninx K, Vandervoort P, Vandijck D, Hens N, Van Craenenbroeck E, Van Driessche N, Dendale P. Effect of comprehensive cardiac telerehabilitation on one-year cardiovascular rehospitalization rate, medical costs and quality of life: A cost-effectiveness analysis. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2015 Aug 19. pii: 2047487315602257. [Epub ahead of print]
Paul Dendale
Enno van der Velde received a BSc degree in electrical engineering at the Technical University Delft, and his master degree (MSEE) in biomedical engineering at the Technical University Twente. After receiving his MSEE, he started his research career in the Clinical Physiology Laboratory at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), and wrote a PhD thesis entitled: "Ventricular Pressure-Volume Relations and Loading Conditions in Vivo". After his PhD study, he was asked by the head of the department of Cardiology at the LUMC to become head of the technical support group at the department of Cardiology. A few years later, Enno obtained the official registration as Medical Physicist, and has since then been responsible for all matters related to medical equipment and IT (development and support) in the department. With his team he was responsible for the design and implementation (in the nineties) of one of the first Cardiology Information Systems (EPD-Vision). Next to his appointment at the LUMC, in 2009 Enno became IT coordinator at the Netherlands Cardiovascular Data Registration (NCDR) organization.
Enno van der Velde has authored more than 100 publications; he was, and will continue to be, involved in a number of committees and activities of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), such as member of the eCommunications Committee, and recently became member of the eHealth Strategy Implementation Group of the ESC. His main interest are: data exchange between medical systems and clinical information systems, standardization in Healthcare, and eHealth / mHealth applications to improve patient care.
Enno has been a faculty member at the two previous European Congresses on eCardiology and eHealth that were held in Bern, Switzerland, organised by Hugo Saner.
Enno T. van der Velde
Friedrich Koehler, MD is a Senior Physician for Cardiology and Head of the Charité-Centre for Cardiovascular Telemedicine. He studied medicine at the Humboldt-University Berlin (Germany) and spent time for research and training in Guildtfort (UK) and Munich (Germany).
From 1994 to 1997 he received a postgraduate training in the intensive care unit and was until 2000 research fellow in cardiology. Since 1997 he is leading public funded research and development projects within the field of Telecardiology.
From 1997 to 2003 he was the Coordinator of a telemedicine project for knowhow transfer between Germany and Baltic States, sponsored by the German Ministry of Health.
From 2005 to 2011 he was the head of the project "Partnership for the Heart" which aim was the development and clinical trial of a new telemonitoring system for patients with heart failure. Within this project he was the principal investigator of the trial "Telemedical Interventional Monitoring in Heart Failure (TIM-HF, NCT00543881), sponsored by the German Ministry of Economics and Technology".
Since 2009 he is the head of the Consortium "Health Region of the Future Northern Brandenburg – Fontane", a research and development project in patients with heart failure and preeclampsia and Principal Investigator of "Telemedical Interventional Management in Heart Failure II" (TIM-HF II, NCT01878630) sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research.
Friedrich Koehler is Professor for Cardiovascular Telemedicine at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin since 2011 and member of the European Society of Cardiology and German Cardiac Society.
Friedrich Koehler – Medical Department of Cardiology and Angiology, Centre for Cardiovascular Telemedicine, Charité, Berlin, DE
Friedrich Koehler
Nico Bruining PhD, FESC
Nico Bruining started his career in 1985 at the Thoraxcenter (department of Cardiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) in the cathlab with some of the pioneers within interventional Cardiology as Professor's P.W. Serruys and de P.J. de Feyter. In 1993 he joined the department of experimental and clinical information processing (KEI) at the Thoraxcenter, of which he is currently the head, as a scientist with as primary focus Cardiovascular imaging. He was involved in the early developments of three-dimensional (3-D) echocardiography, culminating in 1998 with the defense of his PhD thesis - “Quantitative 3-D Echocardiography of the Heart and the Coronary Vessels” under the promotorship of Prof. J.R.T.C Roelandt. Since then he was involved in many clinical studies evaluating new therapies within interventional cardiology.
Nico’s current fields of interest is bringing together clinical and technical innovations within Cardiology in which computer technology plays a major role, currently often referred to as eHealth. This includes implementing, and if necessary developing, platforms to acquire all sorts of cardiovascular related data, including general data registration, patient monitoring, imaging and seamless integration of further computer-assisted analyses , e.g. modelling and quantification. In case of the latter an example is patient specific computer electro-mechanical modelling of the heart, integrating imaging and ECG.
Internationally is Nico since 2000 active within the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) of which he became a fellow in 2006. At first within the working group of e-Cardiology of which he was the chair from 2008-2010. Currently, Nico is again a nucleus member of e-Cardiology and is a member of ECS’s e-Communications advisory board. He is also involved in the development of the ESC congress app and represents the ESC within the international DICOM medical imaging standardization committee. Other scientific tasks are that being deputy editor of EuroIntervention, the interventional journal of the European Heart Journal (EHJ) family and is an international editorial board member of the EHJ. Besides these he is also editorial board member of Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology. He also holds memberships of the EACVI, the imaging, and the EAPCI, the interventional cardiology association.
Affiliation: Head of the department of clinical and experimental information processing, Thoraxcenter, Department of Cardiology, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Nico Bruining
Hugo SANER, MD, FESC is a Cardiologist. He was a Fellow in cardiology from 1980 – 1985 and trained in Bern (Switzerland) and at the Abbott Northwestern Hospitals and the University Hospital of Minnesota, Minneapolis (USA).
In the year 1989, he became Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine, in the year 1996 Titular Professor in Cardiology, and in the year 2008 Associate Professor of Cardiology at the University of Bern (Switzerland). From 1991 – 2004, he served at the Board of Directors of the Swiss Heart Foundation and thereafter founded his own local Heart Foundation in Olten (Switzerland).
From 1997 – 2013, he was Director of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, University Hospitals, Inselspital Bern (Switzerland).
In the years 2003 – 2007, he was Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation.
In the year 2006, he became Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of Timisoara, Romania, in the year 2006 he became a Honorary Member of the Romanian Society of Cardiology and of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Prävention und Rehabilitation. From 2006 – 2008, he was President of the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. In the year 2006 he was a cofounder of the Graduate School of Health Sciences, University of Bern, and served as Committee Member until 2014. For several years, he was also Director of the Research Methods Training Courses, European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation.
Since 2012, he has a Chair for Preventive and Acute Cardiology at the I.M. Sechenov Fist Moscow State Medical University in Russia and became an Honorary Member of the National Russian Society for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. His actual position is Senior Consultant and Research Associate at the University Clinics for Cardiology and Research Associate at the ARTORG Center, University of Bern (Switzerland). He founded the European Congress on eCardiology and eHealth in the year 2011 and since that year, he is acting as Congress Director of the European Congress on eCardiology and eHealth.
Hugo Saner – Department of Cardiology, Swiss Cardiovascular Centre, University Hospital, Bern, CH
