My name is Michaël, and I live in the Makelaarsstraat in Ghent. This is a street in the ‘Muide’, a working-class district in the port area in the north of Ghent.
Originally I come from Poperinge, but after 3 years I moved with my parents to Ypres in 1978. There I went through primary school and college and then ended up as a student via Leuven through the physiotherapy courses at the Sportkot and nursing at STEIL in Ghent.
In September 2000 I started as a nurse at AZ Sint-Lucas in Ghent and followed the nursing science, option Health Information and Education at Ghent University. I was living in student housing in the Akkerstraat and started working in the general surgery and pulmonology wards.
Unfortunately, my mother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in June 2001. I moved from a duplex to a real rental house in the Makelaarsstraat in the Muide. in Ghent. I really felt at home. With my physiotherapy background, I mainly cared for people in the orthopaedics ward.
My father’s father met a new partner, and I was happy that they were having a good time together.
Bitten by PCs, IT and everything that has an IP address, I switched to the care informatics department in 2007. Together with my colleagues, I introduced the electronic patient record within the hospital.
In addition to testing, training, individual coaching and staffing the helpdesk, I was involved in online support to the nurses, doctors and other healthcare providers who use the electronic health record. I even made e-learning videos about it.
I was completely into digital healthin that period with my own website and twitter account, was still a member of the ICT4care working group, made and maintained the website, helped organize the conferences, was present at events,… and was completely on top of the subject.
When we implemented the system in the emergency department,I was able to buy a house on Groendreef, on the water, in three days in 2013.
In 2015 I also helped with the start and renovation of De Koer and thought that my house was also in need of renovation. It really seemed like the right time to tackle my own house. I started in 2016 with some easy works, which turned out to be bigger works, and where I didn’t really know how to go about it. I also met my girlfriend Griet in June 2018 during a party at De Koer.
In 2018-2019, the hospital decided to implement a completely new integrated electronic health record. I became an ‘analyst‘ and became responsible for the patient file of everyone who was not a doctor and pharmacist in the hospital (physiotherapists, speech therapists, social services,…) and who kept a file for all patients in the hospital for their own discipline. With my nursing background, I also helped with the nursing part, but then everything suddenly changed. It turned out to be a lot of work that I tried to do as well as possible, also had some side projects (preparation SNOMED (SNOWat?), a glossary with project terminology, e-learning,…), but at the same time suddenly something turned out to be wrong with my father. What were initially very harmless symptoms turned out to get worse and worse with further research and in diagnostics and further treatment. He, my hero who could do everything, passed away in 2019 after a disease process that evolved far too quickly.
Four years later in February 2023, my dads partner passed away suddenly and completely unexpectedly, which dealt everyone another severe blow. I was still in the process of recovering from the previous period, and a new phase began.