Jan Geissler

Jan Geissler is Director of the ‘European Patients Academy on Therapeutic Innovation’, a project funded by the EU Commission and EFPIA that will develop educational material and training courses to educate patient representatives and the lay public about all processes involved in medicines development. He is also founder and managing director of Patvocates, acting as independent consultant in cancer policy, patient advocacy and social media.

After his University diploma in Business Management in the UK and Germany, Jan held various managerial positions in telecommunications R&D and media industry think tanks before he focused his professional life on patient advocacy in 2008. Being a leukemia survivor who participated in various clinical trials himself, Jan founded the online patient community Leukämie-Online/LeukaNET in 2002, which is one of the most frequented online platforms for leukemia patients on the German speaking Internet today. In 2003, he co-founded the European Cancer Patient Coalition (European umbrella association of more than 300 cancer patient groups) and became its first full time director 2008. In 2007, Jan also co-founded the CML Advocates Network which connects more than 70 leukemia patient groups from more than 60 countries on all continents. He is a patients' representative in various steering committees and advisory boards, acting e.g. as Secretary of the European Forum for Good Clinical Practice (EFGCP), as alternate member of the EU Committee of Experts for Rare Diseases (EUCERD), as member of the ESMO Patient Working Party, the ECCO Patient Advisory Committee, the Editorial Board of the Journal of European CME, the Institutional Review Board of EORTC, the scientific advisory board of the International CML Foundation, and the External Advisory Board of the University Clinic of Jena. He also acts as an independent expert for the EU Commission.