In memoriam Kor Miedema
Published: Monday, February 6, 2023
On Friday January 27th 2023 Dr Kor Miedema passed away unexpectedly. From 1969 till 2005 Kor Miedema worked as Clinical Chemist in the ISALA teaching hospital, Zwolle, the Netherlands. In his position as Clinical Chemist Dr Miedema was an esteemed ‘boss’ and charismatic colleague with substantial knowledge and experience, and with a personal style that created connection between collaborators and laboratorians.
Dr. Miedema was deeply involved in groundbreaking work in the field of diabetes diagnostics, which has led both nationally and internationally to substantial improvement of diabetes care. He was one of the visionary and avant-la-lettre proponents of metrological traceability of medical test results within allowable measurement uncertainty, as an essential fundament for accurate and comparable HbA1c results across the globe. Thanks to his contributions, an IFCC endorsed HbA1c reference measurement system has been established that is until today the reference standard for all field HbA1c tests. The standardization efforts and analytical performance improvements enabled that HbA1c became not only the biomarker indicated for diabetes monitoring in treated diabetes patients, but also thé test for diagnosing diabetes. The HbA1c reference measurement procedure is still running in his former hospital laboratory, which functions as one of the esteemed calibration labs of the global IFCC standardization network for HbA1c.
For his impactful contribution in the daily care of diabetes patients Dr. Miedema received at the occasion of his retirement in 2005 a prestigious Dutch Award as Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. Dr Miedema will be remembered as a mentor and a great role model for many laboratory specialist and clinical chemists. He will be greatly missed.
Prof Dr. Christa Cobbaert
Dr. Cas Weykamp