Annette van der Helm-van Mil obtained her medical degree in 1998 (cum laude), was ratified as internist in 2005 and as rheumatologist in 2006 and obtained her Ph.D. degree in 2006 (cum laude). She was head of the rheumatology outpatient clinic in Leiden from 2007 till 2016.
Since 2015 she is appointed as professor at the departments of rheumatology in the Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden and in the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her research is aimed at understanding the processes underlying disease progression in the earliest phases of rheumatoid arthritis and predicting the disease course of patients presenting with arthralgia and early arthritis. She supervises the Leiden Early Arthritis cohort, the multicenter Clinically Suspect Arthralgia cohort that runs in Leiden and the Rotterdam area, and the TREAT EARLIER trial.
She has authored >300 articles and has received several grants and prizes, among which grants from the Dutch Scientific Organization, the Dutch Arthritis Foundation and an ERC Starting Grant. Her research line in the two university hospitals into the earliest phases of rheumatoid arthritis has been recognized by the Dutch Arthritis Society as a Research Center of Excellence.
