Simon P. Mooijaart, MD, PhD, is a full professor of Medicine and chair of Gerontology and Geriatrics at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in Leiden, The Netherlands. His research area is appropriate care for older patients. His mission is to discover, develop, deploy and disseminate appropriate care for older patients who are under treatment in the hospital. As the concepts and frameworks of “appropariate care for older people” are generic in various hospital treatments (Emergency Care, chemotherapy, renal transplantation), professor Mooijaart connects research lines across the hospital. Common concepts are screening and prediction, multidisciplanry decision making and older people involvement.
Prof Mooijaart initiated and led several clinical multi-center studies in this area involving older people with various diseases, such as the Acutely Presenting Older Patient (APOP) study on older people in the ED. As a result, the APOP screening program has been implemented in the ED’s of most hospitals in the Netherlands and helps identify older people with frailty and to initiate appropriate (geriatric) care. During the COVID-19 pandemic he initiated the COVID-19 Outcomes in Older People (COOP) study. This Dutch national consortium studies the consequences of COVID-19 for older people in hospital, at home or in nursing home, in an attempt to formulate guidelines for care for older people in future pandemics with other viruses. Currently he is working on integrating generative Artificial Intelligence in Geriatric care.
