Overview
Bernard Vrijens is chief executive officer and scientific lead of AARDEX Group, based in Liège, a role he has held since February 2018. Since September 2009 he has also been an invited professor at the University of Liège.
Vrijens first joined AARDEX Ltd. as a senior statistician in May 2001, remaining until September 2005, and returned to AARDEX Group as general director from January 2010 to May 2012. In between he was chief scientist at Pharmionic Systems from October 2005 to December 2009. He then served as chief science officer at MeadWestvaco Healthcare from June 2012 to June 2015 and at WestRock Company until February 2018.
Earlier in his career he was an expert at the Institut scientifique de la Santé publique – Louis Pasteur, a PhD student and researcher at Ghent University, manager of biometrics at Pfizer Animal Health, a research assistant at CHU de Liège and a scientific collaborator at Hasselt University.
He holds a BSc in mathematics from the University of Liège, an MSc in biostatistics from Hasselt University and a PhD in applied mathematics and informatics from Ghent University.
Career history
In the news
- Looking forward to being in Amsterdam for this event. If you'll be attending, let's connect and discuss the future of medication adherence, digital health, and clinical research. See you there!
- If Netflix can track every click, #ClinicalTrials should be able to track every dose.
- AI applied to 1980s endpoints" has a close cousin: precision therapeutics evaluated with imprecise exposure measurement. We routinely ask whether a drug works, while often lacking an objective, longitudinal measure of whether and when it was actually taken. Digital adherence monitoring has shown that exposure is dynamic, not binary. As with digital cognitive endpoints, progress in therapeutics will increasingly depend on progress in measurement.
- Is the geography of clinical trials creating a new hidden risk for drug development? For decades, Europe has been a reliable region for clinical research. Strong healthcare systems, easy access to care, experienced investigators and highly engaged patients have contributed to relatively high protocol adherence and strong site performance. --> Today, however, the geography of clinical trials is shifting. As pharmaceutical companies increasingly prioritize growth markets and adapt to changing economics, we are seeing fewer sites
- A very good Forbes article highlighting a critical challenge in clinical research: medication nonadherence remains one of the largest sources of data corruption in clinical trials. The article rightly points out the limitations of self-reports, paper diaries, and pill counts, all of which can significantly overestimate adherence. However, I believe it misses the most proven, scalable, and widely adopted solution available today: smart medication packages. For more than two decades, smart packages such as electronic medication
- Pleased to see the publication of the RADIAL (Trials@Home) study, sharing important insights on the implementation of decentralized clinical trials across Europe. In this pioneering initiative, AARDEX Group contributed its adherence monitoring platform to support robust and accurate measurement of treatment exposure in a decentralized setting. Congratulations to the Trials@Home team and all collaborators involved in this important work.
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