Prof Thomas Kühlein(USA)
Email Chair
Thomas is the Professor of General Practice in Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.
He was born Washington DC, USA, in 1962. His family moved to Germany when he was three years old. He grew up in Munich in the south of Germany. After finishing his studies and training, he worked as a general practitioner in a group practice in Northern Bavaria, in a rural area, for ten years.
In 2006 he went to the University of Heidelberg where he did his habilitation (similar to a PhD). The research topic was on how to gain information about the content of primary medical care from electronic health records. Accordingly the title of the research project was
CONTENT (CONTinuous morbidity registration Epidemiologic NeTwork). Data capture in the CONTENT-project was accomplished with the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-2). Via the CONTENT-project he became member of the WONCA International Classification Committee (WICC).
In Germany, there currently is a severe lack of young general practitioners in the rural areas. This is why the government forced and funded the opening of new institutes of general practice at many German Universities. One of these new institutes is in Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he became the professor, in October 2013. His work at the university is on health services research and teaching. He still sees patients and is leading a group practice in the suburbs of Erlangen in parallel with his university work. In 2016, I became the chair of the WICC at our meeting in Turku/Finland.
He is married to Anna, who is an architect, and has three children. The eldest became a physician and the two younger ones are studying physics and sports sciences.