Viet-Thi Tran
Viet-Thi Tran is the coordinator of the project. He is a Full Professor of Epidemiology at Université Paris Cité and at the Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), in Paris France. He leads a research group around novel methods to generate primary evidence in the METHODS team (CRESS UMR 1153), which is specialized on therapeutic evaluation in chronic conditions. His work revolves around three topics: 1) minimally disruptive medicine, and especially on the use of digital tools to care for patients with chronic conditions; 2) citizen science methods; and 3) novel methods in therapeutic evaluation.
Gro Rosvold Berntsen
Gro Rosvold Berntsen is a professor at the Norwegian Centre for E-health Research, in Tromsø. She is an expert in person-centered care, digital health innovations, and integrated care for multimorbid patients. She has led major research projects demonstrating that person-centered care significantly improves patient outcomes. In the Digital Cactus project, she leads Work Package 1 on the impact of digital tools on patient-professional relationships. Her work focuses on person-centered and integrated care models, digital health solutions for complex care needs, and evidence-based e-health strategies.
Margus Viigimaa
Margus Viigimaa is Chief Physician and Research Head at the Cardiology Centre of the North Estonia Medical Centre, and a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Tallinn University of Technology in Tallinn, Estonia. He is an internationally recognized expert in cardiovascular prevention and hypertension, having served as President of the European Society of Hypertension. In the Digital Cactus project, he serves as Principal Investigator for the North Estonia Medical Centre and leads Work Package 1 activities. His work focuses on hypertension prevention and treatment, cardiovascular risk assessment and management, and implementing evidence-based digital approaches to improve cardiovascular outcomes.
Anne Stiggelbout
Anne M. Stiggelbout is a professor of Medical Decision Making at the Department of Biomedical Data Sciences, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. She is an expert in shared decision making, value-based health care, and patient preferences, having served as President of the Society for Medical Decision Making. In the Digital Cactus project, she serves as Principal Investigator for the Dutch team and liaison to The Dutch Research Council (NWO). Her work focuses on shared decision making and risk communication, value-based health care, and patient-centered care models.
Jean-Philippe Bertocchio
Jean-Philippe Bertocchio is a nephrologist at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris France, where he focuses on rare parathyroid disorders. With more than twenty years of experience in designing and leading clinical research, he has developed particular expertise in online cohort methodologies. He is also the CEO of SKEZI, a digital health startup, where he channels his expertise into building tools that improve how patient data is collected and used in research. As part of the Digital Cactus project, he is involved in Work Package 2, dedicated to developing a patient-reported instrument aimed at identifying opportunities where digital solutions could improve care pathways. In this context, he leads the technical development of the tool, effectively combining clinical expertise with practical innovation.
Marleen Kunneman
Marleen Kunneman, PhD, is a clinical linguist and decision scientist, focusing her research and teaching on patient-clinician collaboration, communication, impact of care, and care communities. In Digital Cactus, she leads the Work Package on the tool development, working with our interdisciplinary and international group of researchers, clinicians, and healthcare designers to develop a novel validated patient-reported tool to identify when and where care could benefit from digital solutions.
Barbara Nicholl
Barbara Nicholl is Professor of Primary Care Research at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on improving quality of life and outcomes in primary care, particularly for people living with multiple long-term conditions, chronic pain, and combined physical and mental health challenges. She has strong expertise in epidemiology, mixed-methods research, treatment burden, models of care, and digital health solutions. Deeply committed to reducing health inequalities, she integrates patient and public involvement throughout her work.
Terje Peetso
Terje Peetso is the Chief Medical Innovation Officer at the North Estonia Medical Centre in Tallinn, Estonia. She also coordinates the hospital’s international cooperation, including participation in European research and innovation projects, institutional partnerships, and knowledge exchange initiatives. With her medical background, she contributes to strengthening innovation capacity and international collaboration. Her work focuses on the development and management of international healthcare partnerships, coordination of research and innovation collaborations, and support for strategic initiatives, including digital health and cross-border cooperation.
Amel Ghozia
Amel Ghozia holds a PhD and specializes in medical and public health expertise in health decision-making processes (amicable, judicial, or public). She is currently a Scientific Project Manager at the Paris Public Health Institute and an associated researcher at the Institut Droit et Santé (Université Paris Cité). Within the Digital-CACTUS initiative, she serves as Project Manager, overseeing coordination and alignment with the project’s scientific objectives.
Antoine Braconnier
Antoine Braconnier is a nephrologist at the Department of Nephrology, Hôpital Maison Blanche, Teaching Hospital in Reims, France. He is currently a PhD student focusing on the care journey of patients living with multiple chronic conditions, with a particular emphasis on how these trajectories can be measured, understood, and improved. Within the Digital Cactus project, he contributes to Work Package 2, which aims to develop and validate a novel patient-reported tool designed to identify when and where care processes could benefit from digital solutions. His doctoral work combines a systematic review of methods to measure care journeys in chronic conditions with the development of an innovative patient-reported tool to map these journeys and identify failures in care, including a pilot study within the ComPaRe cohort.
Tiphaine Lenfant
Tiphaine Lenfant is an internal medicine physician at the Department of Internal Medicine, Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou, AP-HP, in Paris, France. She is currently completing her PhD, focusing on patient and physician preferences for consultation modalities (in-person versus remote care) in different clinical situations. In the Digital Cactus project, she contributes to Work Packages 1 and 2 through qualitative interviews and literature reviews, examining how digital health technologies affect the patient-physician relationship. Her work focuses on healthcare organization and delivery, patient preferences for telemedicine and remote care, and evidence-based approaches to integrated care for patients with long-term conditions.
Lorraine Huet
Lorraine Huet holds a degree in bioengineering and works as a project manager at SKEZI, a digital health startup. She combines regulatory expertise with technical skills to design tools that support large-scale cohort and enable innovative research studies. Within the Digital Cactus project, she is part of Work Package 2, where she coordinates the technical development of the patient-focused tool designed to identify where digital solutions could enhance care pathways.
Fia van Heteren
Fia van Heteren is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Medical Decision Making at Leiden University Medical Centre and Health Campus The Hague. With a background in medical anthropology and public administration, she studies health inequalities, frontline professionals, and interprofessional collaboration in public health. In the Digital Cactus project, she coordinates WP1 and WP2 interviews in the Netherlands and leads the WP2 design and tool development.
Elisa Salvi
Elisa Salvi is a researcher at the Norwegian Centre for E-health Research, in Tromsø. She completed her PhD at the University of Pavia, Italy, focusing on developing clinical decision support systems based on temporal analytics on patient-generated data. Her research expertise includes clinical decision support systems, patient-generated health data, and personalized chronic pain care. In the Digital Cactus project, she contributes to Work Package 1 through literature reviews and qualitative studies, investigating the effects of digital tools on relationships between patients with complex care needs and healthcare providers.
Undine Knarvik
Undine Knarvik is a Social Anthropologist and senior advisor at the Norwegian Centre for E-health Research, in Tromsø, with over 25 years of experience in telemedicine and e-health research. Her expertise includes welfare technology for vulnerable populations, telemedicine adoption, and user-centered e-health solutions. In the Digital Cactus project, she operationalizes Work Package 1, coordinating qualitative interviews across four European countries examining patient and healthcare professional experiences with digital tools. Her work focuses on qualitative research methods in e-health, welfare technology implementation, and knowledge translation.
Meghan Bradway
Meghan Bradway is a researcher at the Norwegian Centre for E-Health Research, in Tromsø. She is an expert in mHealth and chronic illness self-management, with extensive experience in participatory and action research methods. Her work examines how technology facilitates collaboration between healthcare providers and patients, particularly exploring patient-generated data from mHealth technologies. In the Digital Cactus project, she conducts literature reviews and contributes to planning and analysis of patient and physician interviews examining how digital health technologies affect the patient-physician relationship.
Ülle Võhma
Ülle Võhma is a senior psychiatrist at the Psychiatry Clinic of the North Estonia Medical Centre in Tallinn, Estonia. She is an experienced specialist in mental health disorders, with expertise in panic disorder and anxiety disorders. She completed her PhD in 2019 at the University of Tartu on personality traits and pharmacological treatment response in panic disorder. In the Digital Cactus project, she contributes expertise in psychiatric care and integrated mental health services. Her work focuses on diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders, implementation of evidence-based approaches in specialized mental health care, and development of patient-centered care models.