Theo Verheij MD, PhD

After his medical training at the Leiden University Medical Center, Theo Verheij worked as general practitioner in Noordwijk from 1987 to 1997. He got his PhD at Leiden University in 1995 after writing a thesis on Acute Bronchitis in General Practice. In 1997 he was appointed full professor of general practice at the University Medical Center Utrecht. His focus of research is infectious diseases in primary care and antibiotic use in outpatients.

He was and still is involved in the implementation of research in clinical practice for instance by contributing to guidelines on infectious diseases and by advising on monitoring and improving antibiotic use in the Netherlands and Europe. He combines his scientific work with part-time clinical work at one of the academic primary care health centres of the Julius Center, UMC Utrecht.

The main scientific interests of Theo Verheij are respiratory tract infections and antibiotic use in primary care. He was and is involved in many observational and intervention studies in this field. He is member of the board of the Dutch Working Party on Antibiotic Use and first author of the national guidelines on lower respiratory tract infections in primary care. On an international level Theo Verheij is one of the principal investigators of the EU funded network of excellence called GRACE, a consortium that studies the management of lower respiratory tract infections in primary care and the aetiology and genetic backgrounds of bacterial resistance. Theo Verheij was one of the founders and first chair of the General practice Research in Infections Network (GRIN). Until now he supervised 25 PhD students and co-authored 208 peer-reviewed papers (H-index 32).