What’s in it for you?
APH Junified 2026 offers an inspiring keynote and hands‑on workshops to boost your AI skills. The event is also a great opportunity to connect with other early and mid‑career APH researchers across disciplines.
APH vice director Jeroen Lakerveld will chair the day. During the plenary session, you will be introduced to the Amsterdam Center for AI & Health (AmsCAIH), the AI-Health center within APH, which has recently been established. This introduction will be given by Martijn Schut, Full Professor of Translational AI in Laboratory Medicine at Amsterdam UMC and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Prof. Schut will then dive into the power of AI in health research with his keynote: Hidden in plain text: Using AI on general practice notes to detect lung cancer earlier.
After the break, you have the possibility to attend a workshop of your choice.
- Workshop A – AI-assisted literature research in practice – Bram Kreuger
- Workshop B – Beyond the hype - Responsible use of AI in occupational and public health – dr. Astrid de Wind & Max Tijhuis
- Workshop C – Communication visualized – Inge Dekker
We end the day with each other with drinks, appetizers and network opportunities with fellow early and midcareer APH researchers.
Below you will find more information about the speakers and workshops.
Download program
Registration
Register here for APH Junified 2026!
Registration will close on June 10. For questions, please contact aph@amsterdamumc.nl
Keynote presentation
Hidden in plain text: Using AI on general practice notes to detect lung cancer earlier
By: Prof. Martijn C. Schut
Every year, thousands of lung cancer patients are diagnosed too late, not because the signs weren’t there, but because no one connected the dots in time. The clues were hiding in plain sight, buried in years of notes that no one had systematically analyzed. Until now.
In this keynote, prof. Martijn Schut presents a study in which AI was trained on over half a million primary care records to detect lung cancer months before formal diagnosis, not through expensive new tests or biomarkers, but by reading routine general practice (GP) consultation notes written in everyday language.
The results are promising: the model learned to flag patients several months earlier, using only words that GPs had already written. In this talk, you’ll hear how the study was set up, what the algorithm picked up in GP notes, and what this might mean for earlier cancer detection in primary care and the way we use routinely collected health data in practice and research.
Prof. Martijn C. Schut is Full Professor of Translational AI in Laboratory Medicine at Amsterdam UMC (trailab.nl) and VU University Amsterdam. His work focuses on bringing medical AI from theory into clinical practice, from bytes to bedside: research, development and implementation of medical AI models across clinical domains including oncology, cardiology, geriatrics, and intensive care. Martijn is one of the initiators and on the management team of the recently established Amsterdam Center for AI & Health, the AI-Health center within APH.
Workshops
Workshop A: AI-assisted literature research in practice
By: Bram Kreuger, AI-Advies & Training
In this hands-on workshop, you will put AI to work on your own research. We start with a practical overview of the most relevant tools for AI-assisted literature research: Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar, Perplexity, and others. What does each tool do, and when do you use which? After a live demonstration, you will carry out a mini literature review on your own research question, using multiple tools and comparing what they produce. We then look critically at the results: how do you spot a hallucinated citation, assess source quality, and decide what to trust? The session closes with a group reflection on what worked, what surprised you, and how to build these tools responsibly into your workflow.
Preparation: please bring a fully charged laptop. No prior experience with AI tools is required. Creating a free account on one or more of the AI-literature tools mentioned above is recommended but not mandatory.
Bram Kreuger is an AI-trainer and consultant, and partner of AI-Advies & Training. He works with organizations across research, healthcare, and the public sector, helping teams build practical and critical skills in generative AI. In his consultancy work, he contributes to the GenAI program at TNO and has a background AI with publications on human-computer interaction, including work on AI-mediated communication and technology use in low-resource contexts.
Workshop B: Beyond the hype - Responsible use of AI in occupational and public health
By: dr. Astrid de Wind & Max Tijhuis
Join this interactive workshop on the responsible use of AI in occupational healthcare and the broader field of public health. Astrid de Wind and Max Tijhuis will introduce participants to their research on the responsible use of AI in occupational healthcare, focusing on concrete use cases, stakeholder attitudes, needs and expectations, and underlying values. Building on the EU Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI, we translate key principles into questions and considerations relevant for responsible application of AI in the field of public health. Together with participants, we will then make the translation to their own domains, exploring unique contextual features, expected stakeholder attitudes, and ethical dilemmas related to AI.
Astrid de Wind is Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator within Amsterdam UMC, department of Public and Occupational Health. The focus of her research is on data-driven approaches and AI within the domain of occupational health. She co-leads the Academic Collaborative Center ‘Data-driven Absence and Prevention Research in Occupational Healthcare’, which is a collaboration between the Amsterdam UMC and HumanTotalCare, the largest occupation health service in the Netherlands.
Max Tijhuis is PhD-candidate within HumanTotalCare, department of Research and Development, and within Amsterdam UMC, department of Public and Occupational Health. The focus of his research is on the responsible use of AI within occupational healthcare with a specific focus on ethical, communicative and legal aspects.
Workshop C: Communication visualized
By: Inge Dekker, Teken je Boodschap
Do you want your communication to have more impact? Do you want to see how easy it can be to use drawing? Are you looking for an accessible introduction to drawing?
Then the workshop “Communication visualized” is the perfect place to start!
An active and dynamic workshop where you’ll immediately receive practical tools that let you experience how you can draw with impact!
We believe that anyone can draw— yes, you too!
Here’s what you’ll learn during the workshop;
- The basics of business drawing
- The function of drawing
- The applicability of drawing
- Real-world examples
Inge Dekker is trainer at Teken je Boodschap (Dray your Message). “I’m a big believer in the power of visual communication. Using simple drawings clarifies your message, engages your audience, and improves retention. My goal is to help everyone in people-facing roles discover how to use visuals to maximize their impact.”
Note: This workshop will not focus on AI.
Register here for APH Junified 2026!