Pharmacoepidemiology Webinar | Exploring Herbal Medicine: Applying Epidemiology Principles
9 February 2026
Welcome from the Chairs
1st Pharmacoepidemiology Webinar
Exploring Herbal Medicine: Applying Epidemiology Principles
It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the webinar “Design and Methodological Aspects of a Pharmacoepidemiological Study for Young Researchers”, organized by the Hellenic Society of Pharmacoepidemiology in collaboration with the MDPI journal Pharmacoepidemiology.
This event brings together distinguished experts from across Europe and the United States to share practical insights and current perspectives on study design, methodological challenges, and analytical approaches in pharmacoepidemiology. Our aim is to support young researchers and early‑career scientists in developing rigorous, high‑quality research that can meaningfully contribute to public health and clinical decision-making.
We are honored to host a panel of renowned speakers who will cover a wide range of topics—from federated real‑world evidence and comparator selection to drug–drug interactions and approaches for addressing unmeasured confounding, including in vaccine safety research. Their combined expertise will provide valuable learning opportunities for all attendees.
We hope this webinar will foster scientific exchange, encourage thoughtful discussion, and inspire the next generation of pharmacoepidemiologists. Thank you for joining us, and we wish you an engaging and informative session.
Date: 09 February 2026
Time: 3:00 pm CET | 10:00 pm CST Asia
Webinar ID: 860 7709 2738
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
Event Chairs
Laboratory of Hygiene and Environmental Protection, Medical School, Democritus University of Thrace, 68100 Alexandroupoli, Greece
Dr Christos Kontogiorgis is Associate Professor of Hygiene at the Medical School, Democritus University of Thrace, Alexandroupolis, Greece. He participates in many undergraduate and postgraduate courses. He has recently co-organized the Postgraduate Course entitled “Primary Health Care”. He has organized the first research group of pharmacoepidemiological studies in Greece and he is the coordinator of the Greek Symposium on Pharmacoepidemiology, which was organized five times. He is co founder of Hellenic Society of Pharmacopeidmeiology. He is representative of Greece in ENCePP and he has been elected as member of ENCePP Steering Group He is a co author or author of correspondence in over 90 PubMed-indexed and Scopus-indexed papers and 250 studies presented in National and International Conferences. He is supervisor of Postdocroral Resarchers and PhD, Master and undergraduate students. He has been involved in many European and national research projects either as PI or as member of the research group.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Professor Theoklis Zaoutis, MD, MSCE, PhD, is an internationally recognised paediatric infectious diseases specialist, epidemiologist, and public health leader. He is a Professor of Pediatrics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where he previously served as Chief of Infectious Diseases. Trained in the United States and Greece, his research focuses on antimicrobial resistance, healthcare-associated infections, antimicrobial stewardship, and patient safety, with 300+ peer-reviewed publications. He is also the founder and Scientific Director of CLEO, a clinical epidemiology and outcomes research centre in Greece, and has held senior national leadership roles, including President of Greece’s National Organization for Public Health (EODY), contributing significantly to public health policy and pandemic response.
Institute of Applied Biosciences, Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (INAB|CERTH)
Dr Pantelis Natsiavas is a Researcher (Grade C) and Software Engineer at the Institute of Applied Biosciences, Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (INAB|CERTH) in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he leads the eHealth Lab focusing on digital health, medical informatics, drug safety, and real-world data research. He holds a PhD from Sorbonne University (Paris, France), two master’s degrees, and a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and has over a decade of experience in software development and R&D projects across Europe and Greece. Since 2013 he has participated in numerous national and EU-funded projects (including serving as Technical Coordinator of the Horizon 2020 MyPal project), and his work embraces computational approaches like symbolic AI and knowledge engineering to support healthcare decision support, pharmacovigilance, and telemedicine systems.
Invited Speakers
Department of Pharmacy, University of Upsala, Sweden
Björn Wettermark, M.Sc.Pharm, PhD is professor of pharmacoepidemiology at Uppsala university, Sweden and visiting professor at Vilnius university, Lithuania. His research focus on drug utilization as a tool in health policy including prescribing quality indicators, international comparisons of drug utilization, sustainable drug prescribing, evidence generation for new medicines and patient adherence to treatment. He has previously had various managerial positions in the health region of Stockholm as well as other commitments including membership in national and regional strategic groups on medicine management, scientific advisor to the Swedish Medical Products Agency and chair of the European Drug Utilization Research group (EuroDURG), the European chapter of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology
Institute of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Dr. Douros is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He received his Medical Degree in 2009 and his Doctorate Degree (Dr. med.) in 2012, and was trained in Clinical Pharmacology from 2012 to 2016 at Charité. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Pharmacoepidemiology from 2016 to 2018 at the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University. From 2019 to 2023, he worked as an Assistant Professor at the McGill Department of Medicine and as an Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. In 2023, he joined the Charité Institute of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology as an Associate Professor. Dr. Douros's research focuses on the effectiveness and safety of commonly prescribed medications in vulnerable populations, including patients with chronic liver disease, older adults, and patients subjected to polypharmacy and at risk of drug-drug interactions. Given the underrepresentation of such populations in randomized trials, his research program provides much needed information regarding the benefit-risk profile of drugs. His research is supported by the German Research Foundation (Heisenberg Program 2023-present).
Rutgers Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science at the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States
Farzin Khosrow-Khavar, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Rutgers School of Public Health and a core faculty member of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science (PETS) at the Rutgers Institute for Health. His research focuses on cancer pharmacoepidemiology, with an emphasis on the utilization and comparative effectiveness and safety of cancer therapies. His work leverages large linked electronic health records data sources such as SEER-Medicare and Veterans Affairs data to inform clinical and regulatory decision-making.
• Health Data Sciences (HDS), Translational Sciences, Botnar Research Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
• Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Professor Daniel Prieto-Alhambra (MD, MSc (Oxon), PhD) is a clinician scientist with over 15 years’ experience in pharmacoepidemiology and real-world evidence. He is Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at the University of Oxford, leads the Health Data Sciences section at the Botnar Research Centre, and has been Deputy Director of the EMA-funded DARWIN EU® initiative since 2022, also leading the HDR UK Real World Evidence Pilot Network. His research focuses on the analysis of national and international routine health data to inform regulatory and HTA decision-making. He has published over 420 papers (h-index 78) and has extensive experience supervising PhD students and mentoring researchers from assistant to associate professor.
Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Clinical Pharmacology
Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Sophie is an Assistant Professor in Pharmacoepidemiology Methods. She has a background in Epidemiology and has experience with using regular care data for research from her PhD on sex differences in the safety and efficacy of cardiovascular medication. Her work focusses on the methodological challenges surrounding the use of real world data for research in the topic areas of safety of COVID-19 vaccinations and sex differences in de safety and dosage of cardiovascular medication
Registration
This is a FREE webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information on how to join the webinar.
Registrations with academic institutional email addresses will be prioritized.
Certificates of attendance will be delivered to those who attend the live webinar.
Can't attend? Register anyway and we'll let you know when the recording is available to watch.
Program
|
Speaker/Presentation |
Time in CET |
Time in CST Asia |
Time in EST |
|
Theoklis Zaoutis (Chair) Christos Kontogiorgis (Chair) Pantelis Natsiavas (Chair) Introduction to Webinar |
3:00 - 3:05 pm |
10:00 - 10:05 pm |
09:00 - 09:05 am |
|
Bjorn Wettermark (Speaker 1) Cross National Comparisons of Drug Utilization |
3:05 - 3:20 pm |
10:05 - 10:20 pm |
09:05 - 09:20 am |
|
Daniel Prieto Alhambra (Speaker 2) Federated International Real-World Evidence: The Present and Future of Pharmacoepidemiology |
3:20 - 3:35 pm |
10:20 - 10:35 pm |
09:20 - 09:35 am |
|
Antonios Douros (Speaker 3) Pharmacoepidemiology of Drug-drug Interactions |
3:35 - 3:50 pm |
10:35 - 10:50 pm |
09:35 - 09:50 am |
|
Farzin Khosrow-Khavar (Speaker 4) Comparator Selection in Pharmacoepidemiology: Implications for Bias, Confounding, and Interpretability |
3:50 - 4:05 pm |
10:50 - 11:05 pm |
09:50 - 10:05 am |
|
Sophie Bots (Speaker 5) Approaches To Address Unmeasured Confounding in A Vaccine Safety Setting |
4:05 - 4:20 pm |
11:05 - 11:20 pm |
10:05 - 10:20 am |
|
Q&A |
4:20 - 4:40 pm |
11:20 - 11:40 pm |
10:20 - 10:40 am |
|
Theoklis Zaoutis (Chair) Christos Kontogiorgis (Chair) Pantelis Natsiavas (Chair) Closing of Webinar |
4:40 - 4:45 pm |
11:40 - 11:45 pm |
10:40 - 10:45 am |
Sponsors and Partners
Organizers
