Willem Jan Bos

Kidney diseases, and treatment of kidney diseases, have a major impact on patients. Willem Jan Bos first got in contact with Value Based Healthcare / outcomes driven care, through his research on outcomes of care in elderly kidney patients, either choosing dialysis treatment or conservative care. Insight in treatment results improves the decision making process of patients and their physicians. Outcomes of care can further be used in research and in quality improvement projects.

Willem Jan Bos is involved in projects aiming to improve care of kidney patients in the LUMC, the St Antoniusziekenhuis and the Santeon collaboration of 7 hospitals. In the LUMC he is involved in the organisation of care for kidney patients and member of the value based healthcare steering group – LUMC 2.0.

Nationally he is one of the co-chairs of the Linnean Initiative, an initiative in which patients, physicians and administrators collaborate to facilitate the use of outcomes of care and the imnplementation of value based healthcare . Dr Bos chairs the Chronic Kidney Disease working group of the International Consortium of Health Outcomes Measurement. He is, amongst others,  member of the scientific board of the Netherlands Kidney Foundation, board member of the Neokidney Foundation, and member of the regional medical disciplinary board (regionaal tuchtcollege) in Amsterdam.

Academic career
Willem Jan Bos studied medicine at the University of Groningen. During his study he spent 1,5 years at the University of Utah, under supervision of Willem Kolff, the inventor of hemodialysis. He specialized in Internal Medicine and Nephrology at the Erasmus Medical Center (Rotterdam) and the Academic Medical Center (Amsterdam). In 1995 he defended his thesis “Measurement of finger and brachial artery pressure” – cum laude- at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2000 he works at the St Antoniusziekenhuis. Apart from his clinical work and his participation in education and administrative duties, he remained active in research in nephrology, hypertension and pneumonia.

Current lines of research in LUMC, St Antonius Hospital and the Santeon group of hospitals are:
– care for elderly patients with advanced chronic kidney disease
– decision making in kidney disease
– impact of implementation of value based healthcare on outcomes of care
– community acquired pneumonia (multidisciplinary project at St Antonius Hospital)