Maarsingh Otto R

Otto Maarsingh is a general practitioner, epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Department of General Practice, Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc From 2000 to 2003, he attended the vocational training at the Department of General Practice of the University of Utrecht. From 2003 to 2007, he worked as a general practitioner in the central part of the Netherlands and from 2007 to the present as a general practitioner and staff member at the VU University Medical Center’s General Practice in Amsterdam. In November 2004, he started as a PhD student at the Department of General Practice and the EMGO+ Institute for Health and Care Research, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, which resulted in the thesis ‘Dizziness in older patients in general practice: a diagnostic challenge’ (2010). In 2011, he was selected for the International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme (Brisbane Initiative, University of Oxford), a programme that aims to foster and develop future leaders in primary care research. In 2011, he received an individual grant from the Stichting Beroepsopleiding Huisartsen (SBOH) for 4 years and started as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of General Practice & Elderly Care Medicine and the EMGO+ Institute/VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam. In 2013, he completed his education in epidemiology and obtained his registration as Epidemiologist B. In 2013, 2015 and 2017 he received grants that enabled him to perform two RCTs on dizziness in general practice (i.e. multifactorial intervention to improve the prognosis of dizziness and online vestibular rehabilitation to treat dizziness) and a 10-year follow-up study on dizziness in older patients. In 2018, he obtained a grant for a RCT to develop and evaluate an intervention to optimize personal continuity for older patients in general practice. In 2021, he received a grant to implement an online intervention for vestibular symptoms in general practice and a grant to perform an extensive diagnostic accuracy study for patients with vertigo. His research specialties are search strategies in large databases, consensus procedures, diagnostic systematic reviews, and prediction rules. His main areas of interest are dizziness, older patients, diagnostic research, continuity of care, depression, and above all - as a practising GP - translating theory into practice.