Dirk Van den Steen is an economist working at DG SANTE 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. Also, in recent years Dirk worked at the Commission’s Competition DG with a focus on antitrust enforcement in the domain of pharmaceuticals, devices and health services.