PhD Defence: Laure Sillis | June 4, 2026 | KU Leuven

ENTIS member Laure Sillis will defend her PhD thesis “Real-World Data to Evaluate Medication Safety in Pregnancy” on Thursday, June 4th 2026 at 17:00 (CET) in Leuven, Belgium. The defence will also be accessible via livestream.

The thesis explores how different real-world data sources – from self-reported pregnancy registry data to large-scale administrative healthcare databases – can be used to generate evidence on medication safety in pregnancy. It covers the development and evaluation of BELpREG, Belgium’s first national pregnancy registry, as well as applied pharmacoepidemiological studies on the safety of medications in pregnancy.

Supervisors: Prof. Veerle Foulon, Prof. Jan Verbakel and Dr. Michael Ceulemans, Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences, KU Leuven

“Meet the Jury” Symposium | 14:00–16:00 How Can We Generate Evidence on Medication Safety in Pregnancy?
The defence will be preceded by a “Meet the Jury” Symposium. This symposium features three international experts in perinatal pharmacoepidemiology, covering topics relevant to the ENTIS community: self-reported data, data validation, secondary use of administrative healthcare data, and learning health systems.

Session programme:
14:05 – Prof. Marleen van Gelder (Radboud University) – “Self-reported data in pregnancy pharmacoepidemiology, with insights from validation strategies”
14:45 – Prof. Carolyn Cesta (Karolinska Institutet) – “Administrative data in pregnancy pharmacoepidemiology and the need for advanced methods”
15:25 – Prof. Anick Bérard (Université de Montréal) – “Building communities and learning health systems for medication safety in pregnancy”

For more details on the programme, see the flyer below.

Please confirm your attendance via the registration form: Complete form
(If the link is not working, please copy the following URL in your browser: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/1J9dmuexhb)
If you are unable to attend but would still like to receive the manuscript, you can indicate this in the same form.
The livestream link will be shared with all registered online participants in advance of the event.
For any questions, please contact laure.sillis@kuleuven.be