WONCA Working Party: Digital Health

Chair - Dr Ana Luisa Neves

Dr. Ana Luisa Neves is a Clinical Associate Professor in Digital Health and Director of the Global Digital Health Unit at Imperial College, where she leads a team of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, and a practicing General Practitioner in London, UK. Her research interests focus on the use of digital technologies to deliver safer, more effective, and patient-centred care. She has more than 15 years of research experience, and >80 papers published in peer-reviewed journals (>4,800 citations, h-index=31), using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

Prior to joining Imperial College, Dr Neves earned her medical degree from the University of Porto in Portugal, where she also completed her specialist training in General Practice in 2013. She has practiced as a General Practitioner in Portugal and the United Kingdom, and has volunteered in low-income countries, focusing on patient education programs related to women's health and infectious diseases in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Mozambique. During her General Practice residency, she undertook academic and research placements at Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale in Paris and at Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School affiliate in Boston. In 2014, Dr. Neves moved to London to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Medicine at Imperial College London, which she completed in 2018. IIn 2018, she was awarded a scholarship by the European Association of General Practice (WONCA Europe). She subsequently held a Visiting Scholar appointment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, serving as a Home Hospital International Fellow at Ariadne Labs (2024-2025), where she continues serving as Associate Faculty.

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Deputy Chair - Dr Edmond Li

Dr Edmond Li is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Anaesthesia and Surgery at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DLSPH), University of Toronto.

Working at the Sunnybrook Research Institute (SRI), Edmond’s current research focuses on understanding how surgeon and anaesthesiologist characteristics and practice patterns, impact on patient outcomes, care quality, and healthcare resource utilisation. Outside of his appointment with IHPME, Edmond’s research interest pertains to the safer, more efficacious implementation and use of digital health in primary care settings. He is also interested in investigating how undergraduate and post-graduate medical curricula can be updated to incorporate digital health training to encourage greater digital literacy and skills proficiency in future healthcare providers. Edmond remains an Honorary Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Global Digital Health Unit, Department of Primary Care and Public Health at Imperial College London.

Prior to his roles in academia, Edmond worked as a technical consultant with the World Health Organisation (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme in Geneva, Switzerland. His work pertained primarily to the 2018 Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as assisting with monitoring and reporting of other communicable disease outbreaks worldwide. During the initial year of the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Edmond worked with the WHO Ukraine Health Cluster, contributing to ongoing humanitarian response efforts through the design, implementation, monitoring, and analysis of healthcare-related assessments.

Edmond holds an MB BCh BAO from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and an MPH from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He obtained his PhD in Health Policy and Patient Safety from Imperial College London in 2024.

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Secretary - Dr Steven van de Vijver

Steven van de Vijver (1977) is working as a family doctor and Medical Information Officer (MIO) at the OLVG hospital in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In addition, he works as a Senior Advisor at the Amsterdam Health & Technology Institute he is guiding several innovative projects in the field of digital health and primary care like HealthEmove.
In the past he worked for Amsterdam Institute of Global Health and Development and received his PhD during his three years stay at the African Population and Health Research Center on the design, implementation and evaluation of cardiovascular prevention for the urban poor in Nairobi, Kenya.

Currently his specific interest as a medical doctor and researcher is to increase universal health coverage through digital health and in what way can digital innovations diminish instead of increasing the existing inequalities in health. One of the examples is an Electronic Patient Health Records for refugees, migrants and other people on the move.
In addition as a writer he published several books and more than 40 scientific articles.

Workstream Lead, Training & Capacity Building - Dr Hüsna Sarıca Çevik

Hüsna Sarıca Çevik, MD, is a family medicine specialist and Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Ankara University, Turkey, and a postgraduate student in the Division of Epidemiology. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Western University, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Department of Family Medicine, Canada, where she works on patient-centred care, the natural history of symptoms in family practice, and digital health.

She has previously held on-site academic and research positions as a Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, UK (2023), and as an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Hong Kong (2024).

Her research interests include HPV and vaccine communication, sexually transmitted infections, preventive medicine, women’s health, mental health, health literacy, palliative care, primary care, and digital health. She has represented WONCA Europe in several EU-funded HPV projects and employs both qualitative and quantitative research methods in her work.

Workstream Lead, Community & Engagement - Dr Joana Teixeira

Dr. Joana Teixeira is a General Practice registrar in London, UK, with a strong interest in digital health, patient-centred care, and healthcare innovation. She is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Global Digital Health Unit at Imperial College London, where she contributes to international research on digital health curricula in pre- and postgraduate General Practice training, and an InnovateMD Fellow, evaluating the impact of ambient AI documentation tools on clinician wellbeing, consultation efficiency, and patient engagement in NHS primary care. She has experience in leadership across local and international settings, with a particular focus on scientific diplomacy and medical education.

Workstream Lead, Research - Dr Vinicius Anjos de Almeida

Executive Member - Dr Raluca Zoitanu

Dr. Raluca Zoițanu is a full-time family doctor in Bucharest, Romania, where her clinic is a host practice for exchange medical students and resident family doctors from European countries and a training practice for PHC nurses. She is currently an Adjunct Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Department of Public Health, Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, with a special interest in quality improvement and patient safety, health systems and digital health.

Raluca worked for over a decade on national projects that aim to bring digital solutions into real-world primary care settings, from electronic health records to telemedicine and mobile apps. She has also served as an advisor on digital health, human resources in health, primary care development and education in Romania and worked with teams across Europe during her terms as Executive Board member in the European Young Family Doctors' Movement and WONCA Europe.

The first workshop meeting of the WONCA Informatics Working Party took place at the WONCA Regional meeting in Stockholm in July 1996. Since then, the working party has presented workshops and symposiums on information management and technology at most of the WONCA conferences. The aims are to share knowledge and ideas, assist in the education and training of GPs in the field of informatics and to develop projects which encourage the optimal use of digital health in general practice. The WONCA Working Party on Informatics changed its name to the WONCA eHealth Working Party in 2015. In January 2026, the WONCA Executive Committee approved the renaming of the Working Party on eHealth to the Working Party on Digital Health.