Prof. dr. Rietjens, J.A.C.
Judith Rietjens is a Professor of Design for Public Health at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Her expertise lies in person centered healthcare, public health, system approach, decision-making, evaluation of technologies, self-management
Academic Background
Her research focuses on person centered care. Important topics of her research are medical decision-making, the development, evaluation and implementation of decision support tools, and self- and co-management.
With her research group, she studies these topics in diverse populations and settings such as older persons, persons with dementia, chronic diseases, advanced cancer, ICD patients, ICU patients, and homeless persons. They perform quantitative and qualitative studies to describe and elucidate the complexity of patient engagement in these populations, in which they increasingly obtain a “whole system approach”. In the past years they have shifted gradually from descriptive research to intervention research where they develop, evaluate and implement psychosocial and e-health interventions aimed at improving patients’ quality of life, quality of care and decision-making. In these investigations, she collaborates with partners throughout the Netherlands, Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, at the intersection of medicine, public health, psychology and design.
She combines her position at the department of Industrial Design of TU Delft with one at the department of Public Health of Erasmus MC. Combining these two positions will allow her to integrate and combine methodologies and best practices from public health and design research, to optimize person centered care while taking into account healthcare system complexities. This aligns well with the 4D PICTURE project, a large European project that started as per Oct 1, 2022. This project includes combining public health and design methods to improve the use of data-driven decision support tools in oncology across Europe.
Her research has been supported by acquiring several other grants and awards. Some examples: a Veni and a Vidi (personal career development grant of the Dutch Research Council) and a ZonMw grant to investigate how e-health applications can effectively be scaled up. Their research results significantly contributed to scientific and societal debates. She is active in science communication, citizen and patient participation, and supporting the careers of the younger generation of scientists.
