Prof. Dr. K. Brinkman (1961) studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam (1979-1987). He received his PhD in 1990 on an immunological subject ( "The role of anti-dsDNA antibodies in SLE nephritis" - CLB, Amsterdam). In 1990 he started training as an internist at the Elisabeth Hospital in Tilburg, where he cared for many AIDS patients. He completed training at the University Medical Center Nijmegen with a registration in infectious diseases.
Since 1998 he works in the OLVG hospital in the center of Amsterdam as a general internist / infectious disease specialist. OLVG is the largest HIV clinic in the Netherlands (2017, 3300 patients), that rolled out in 2016 a concept for improvement of the quality of hiv care according the principles of Value Based Health Care.
From 2003 to 2006 he was a member of the board of the Dutch Association for HIV clinicians and chairman of the working group for guidelines for antiretroviral therapy. He was appointed in 2006 as professor of internal medicine at the University of Amsterdam in the context of the quality of HIV care. He has participated in many (inter) national research projects in the field of HIV, particularly with regard to side effects of HIV medications. He played an important role in elucidating the stigmatizing side effect lipodystrophy (lipoatrophy), by establishing links with the mitochondrial toxicity of some HIV medicines.
As a professor he is involved in many HIV training activities; in this context he is one of the main lecturers in the HIV education program for Surinam since 2010.
