Choices in clinical care involve the weighing of risk and benefits and assessing their relation to determinants and outcomes, usually in a context of time pressure, deficient information and limited resources. Such choices are made by doctors for and with their patients, who each have their own values and priorities in life, and differ in the outcomes they want to optimise.
Decision analysis enables us to structure, quantify and analyse such multi-dimensional choice problems, and thereby provides answers to "what if?"-questions. It improves the signal-to-noise-ratio of clinical information and the process-quality of decision-making (and ideally the quality of choice-outcomes).
Combining the uniqueness of clinical care (from the aesthetic beauty of operative surgery to the humaneness and empathy of individual patient encounters), with the rigorous analytical exactness and insight of decision analysis, is for me a source of continuing inspiration and fascination.

The title of his inaugural lecture was 'Kiezen en delen'

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