Dirk Van den Steen

Deputy Head of Unit, State of Health, European Semester, Health Technology Assessment (SANTE.C.2)  

Dirk Van den Steen is an economist working at the European Commission’s Directorate General For Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE). He is the Deputy Head of the unit  covering the State of Health, European Semester, Health Technology Assessment, with specific focus on the  performance of national health systems. Prior to joining the Commission in 2009, Dirk worked at the actuarial department of the Belgian public payer organisation RIZIV/INAMI dealing with the database architecture of hospital billing/clinical information, the Belgian Healthcare Knowledge Centre (KCE) as a health economist involved with health technology assessment (HTA) and with IMS Health  (now called IQVIA) as a consultant in pharmaco-economic modelling for the pharmaceutical industry. At the European Commission in the past Dirk has been involved in the development of the Cross-border Healthcare Directive, notably working on the mutual recognition of cross-border prescriptions as well as the assessment of national health systems under the European Semester policy cycle. In the area of medical products at the European Commission Dirk also worked at the European Commission DG for Competition on antitrust enforcement in the domain of pharmaceuticals, devices and health services as well as on the Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe, notably with regard to access to affordable medicines. Most recently, Dirk was in particular involved in the assessment of proposed health system investments by Member States under the Recovery and Resilience Facility as well as the preparation for the implementation of the Regulation on health technology assessment.

Updated: January 2023