Affiliation:

Bern University of Applied Sciences / University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich

Country:

Switzerland

1. Current Status, Position

Prof Dr pharm Helena Jenzer currently is a Hospital Pharmacist FPH.
50%: Bern University of Applied Sciences - Health Division Reader and Head aR&D Nutrition and Dietetics
50%: University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich - Chief Pharmacist                                                           

2. Education

Helena Jenzer is a specialist in hospital pharmacy, educated at the Universities of Fribourg and Bern Switzerland from 1978-1984. She got the Doctor of Pharmacy Degree in 1987. She had then leading positions as head of a hospital pharmacy for more than 25 years, as well as positions as qualified person in producing hospital pharmacies and in a blood product manufacturing industry. She is specialised in all questions of quality assurance, manufacturing and quality control in a frame of cGMP and PIC/s guidelines. She has a CAS in Public Health Collaboration. She was a member of the board of the Swiss National Hospital Pharmacists' Association GSASA and is currently member of the Scientific Committee of the EAHP (European Association of Hospital Pharmacist). Her further activities are leading full-time a nutritional medicines research division at a University of Applied Sciences, which lead to a series of publications including supply chain related articles about the availability of medicines. In 2014 and 2015 she was main proposer and became chair of COST Action CA15105 (European Medicines Shortages Research Network - addressing supply problems to patients). Actually, she has two half time equivalents as head researcher and as chief hospital pharmacist.

3. Research Area

The objectives of the research mandate is to actively shed light on the overlapping fields of nutritional medicine and (hospital) pharmacy. Biochemical pathways in nature are not divided into parts such as it is artificially done in food legislation on one side and in therapeutic agents acts on the other side. Own research activities cover topics such as medicines and nutrients shortages, food-drug interactions, aromatase inhibitors in food, nutritional needs of migrant, food allergies and intolerances, texture modification for dysphagia patients, dysphagia diagnostic kit, malnutrition, substrates for wound healing, nutrigenomics, data mining, smartphone-aided counselling.

Conflict of interest: None