From 2015, based at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in the capital of Viet Nam: Hanoi, Rogier leads a unit of over 50 staff with a total of 4 principal investigators working on antimicrobial resistance: surveillance, stewardship, laboratory capacity building, microbiome, hospital and community studies including community intervention trials (ICAT, CoAct/Chung Tay, AWaRe1), and public and policy engagement. OUCRU Hanoi also acts as a site for clinical trials like SURE, VIETNarms, RECOVERY.
Together with Paul Turner, Rogier is Principal Investigator of ACORN (A Clinically Oriented antimicrobial Resistance surveillance Network). ACORN is an AMR surveillance platform designed to improve routine AMR surveillance, especially in low- and middle-income settings, by allowing the addition of clinical data to what is often collected as microbiology laboratory results only. ACORN data thus provides much-needed context to isolate data with clinical, treatment, and outcome data to better inform the burden of AMR.
After a pilot, phase 2 of ACORN was implemented in 9 countries in Africa and Asia, which showed a pathway for implementation at scale to improve major issues with existing estimates of AMR burden. ACORN was used in the ADVANCE-ID baseline study on Hospital Acquired Infections (ACORN-HAI), and a later developed “lite” version of ACORN was implemented as part of the Fleming Fund regional grant Southeast Asia. Paul and Rogier continue to look for opportunities for further development and implementation of ACORN protocols.
Rogier also collaborates with Paul on another major Wellcome-funded project to develop and implement an open-access Laboratory Information Management System (SEDRI-LIMS) that could operate in tandem with ACORN.
Before his Hanoi position, Rogier was head of the Emerging Infections group in Ho Chi Minh City (2007-2015) and worked on H5N1 and H1N1pdm09 Influenza, Pandemic Preparedness, Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, and molecular diagnostic and BSL3 laboratory capacity building.
Rogier is a medical doctor specialised in Clinical Microbiology and Virology with a PhD on rapid diagnosis and resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Rogier’s main research interests are hospital and community-based clinical trials on infectious diseases, including studying interventions to impact community use of antibiotics, further development and implementation of ACORN, genomic surveillance of antimicrobial resistance, and serology-based surveillance of emerging and vaccine-preventable diseases.
