Marlies Schijven, MD, PhD, MHSc
Marlies Schijven is a board qualified surgeon and a full master in health sciences. Her research is in the area of Digital Health, with a special focus on surgery. Her work relates to the fields of Mobile Healthcare, Simulation and Serious Gaming and on Surgical Innovations in the operating room; involving wearables and medical data recorder systems. She also leads the eHealth program for the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers (NFU), driving initiatives like telemonitoring and patient portal enhancements. Her innovative ideas, such as proposing a "Black Box" for operating rooms to improve surgical safety, reflect her forward-thinking approach. Her clinical work focuses on surgery for GERD, achalasia and upper GI motility disorders. Marlies is appointed both as Principle Educator and Principle Investigator by the AUMC. She is current project owner of the ehealth domain, including the electronic patient file (EPIC – MyChart) for Amsterdam UMC, and founder of the Digital Health Research Institute of the UvA.
She was appointed as the first CMIO (Chief Medical Information Officer) to the Dutch Government, and currently is (supervisory) board member of several institutions and governing organizations including Meander Medical Center and ZonMw; The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development. For over 8 years Marlies has led the eHealth program for the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers (NFU), driving initiatives like telemonitoring and patient portal enhancements.
In 2021, Marlies was named the Digital Healthcare Professional of the Year in the Netherlands. She is internationally recognized as being an expert in virtual- and augmented reality medical simulation, serious gaming, validation studies and –processes, ehealth, app development for healthcare and is actively researching the MedTech domain; authored over 170 scientific publications supervising numerous PhD residents. She successfully acquired subsidiaries and grand prizes. Marlies is Editor of journals among which BMJ Innovations, the Lancet Digital and JMIR Serious Games, and Chief Editor of the Sage Journal Simulation and Gaming. Marlies is the Consortium Leader of KEEPCARING –A HORIZON-HLTH-2023-CARE-04 EU-Program.
Marlies is an active voice on social media, with a substantial following.
In 2025, she was recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice in Healthcare.