Koen is originally from Belgium and has spent time living in the UK and India with spells in Ireland and South Africa. He is a veteran of Banking Technology software industry, with over 30 years experience as a senior executive at worldwide market leaders in productised banking software solutions, such as Misys, Temenos, and Polaris, as well as global strategy roles at technology leaders Microsoft and Accenture. Diagnosed with PD at age 50, Koen has been living with the condition for 10 years now and following a successful DBS procedure a few years ago is gaining experience acting as a non-executive advisor to healthcare companies focused on PD.
Koen is married to Shabnam and currently resides in Antwerp.
1. What motivated you to participate as a patient/advisor in MobiliseD
I am convinced that it is necessary to collect more data about Parkinson’s Disease (PD), in
order to find a cure.
By turning a purely clinical diagnosis – i.e. observations by a neurologist – into a combination
of structured and unstructured data, we may be able ultimately to make PD measurable.
2. What do you believe you can contribute
My professional background in technology innovation combined with the ‘domain expertise’
gained from 10 years of living with PD enables me to ‘connect the dots’ …
3. How would you measure the project’ s success.
I hope that MobiliseD will ultimately be able to use mobility as a way to diagnose, measure
the effectiveness of medication and therapies and measure progression of the disease,
including the prediction of falls.
I will judge the project’s success by the extent to which it delivers on that ambitious hope…
4. What specific contributions can you highlight to date
Raising awareness of the need for context data such as medication timing and deep brain
stimulation settings to make the mobility measures more relevant to PD.