Research expertise

Dr. Patrick Soentjens is an infectious diseases specialist with clinical expertise in Belgium in the field of travel medicine, HIV, sexual transmitted diseases, tropical diseases and severe multiresistant infections.

He is active in outbreak management and in the preparedness of outbreak teams. He diagnosed the first Covid-19 case in Belgium on February 2, 2020 at the Military Hospital in Brussels, was responsible in the start-up of Covid-19 wards at the University Hospital in Antwerp, was in charge of the medical teams to manage the hundreds of monkeypox cases at ITM in 2022.

As Head of the Travel Clinic ITM since 2016, the core team to perform reference tasks in travel medicine was greatly expanded. A new website and app www.wanda.be were launched under his supervision in November 2019.

As Chief Physician at the Polyclinic ITM, he put accents on the daily operation with attention to more output, people management, improved processes and further specialization in ITM's niche activities.

He was appointed Associate Professor of the new Chair of Travel Medicine at ITM in April 2021.

Since January of 2016, he is Chair of the Belgian Study Group of Travel Medicine who gives advice on travel medicine guidelines in Belgium.

In addition, he's a consultant for the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group and he is an advisor in other boards like the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAHPM), the European Medicine Agency (EMA), the Scientific Committee of the Conference of the International Society of Travel Medicine (CISTM) and Journal of Travel Medicine.

For more than ten years, his team has carried out investigator-driven clinical trials in soldiers at the Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels on alternative and shorter intradermal vaccine schedules with microdosisses of existing rabies vaccines. He conducted two large pivotal studies (between 2011-2017) which greatly contributed to a revision of the WHO recommendations on rabies vaccination in 2018. He is constructing a research portfolio investigating novel ways to vaccinate travellers and soldiers with new and shorter regimens of new or existing vaccines. Under his leadership and drive, an entirely new clinical trial center with dedicated team to conduct vaccine trials was started in the ITM in 2021.

In addition, he's supervising a phage therapy coordination team at the Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels. They builded a clinical coordination platform to ease patient processes for human applications of phage therapy together with academic hospitals in Belgium and overseas.