CEO
Prof Dr Marc Twagirumukiza, MD, PhD
Prof. Dr. Marc Twagirumukiza is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Heritage Alliance Ltd, providing strategic leadership and scientific direction across research, innovation and partnerships. His work combines academic and industry experience with a commitment to strengthening healthcare and research capacity through regional and international collaboration. His expertise and interests span three principal areas:
- Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics. He brings extensive experience in clinical development, therapeutic innovation and research and development services for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, drawing on previous roles with Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, Galapagos, Pfizer and GSK. His experience encompasses clinical research, medical affairs and drug safety. Through Heritage Alliance, he directs comprehensive contract research organisation (CRO) services addressing infectious diseases and the growing burden of non-communicable diseases in low- and middle-income countries.
- Health informatics and data sciences. His work focuses on health data harmonisation, interoperability and the use of routinely collected data to generate evidence for research and healthcare improvement. His experience includes engagement with the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community and its Africa Chapter, the European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN), and Rwanda’s LAISDAR project. He also chairs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Healthcare Schema Vocabulary Community Group, contributing to the development of shared vocabularies for describing and exchanging health information.
- Cardiovascular health in sub-Saharan Africa. He has a longstanding research interest in hypertension and cardiovascular disease prevention and management. He was among the scientists who initiated the African Society of Hypertension (AfSoH) Initiative to advance scientific collaboration against hypertension across Africa. He continues this commitment through his involvement in the African Federation of Hypertension Organisations and Societies (AFHOS), supporting its mission to strengthen African hypertension organisations and professionals through collaborative research, education and evidence-based advocacy at national and continental levels.
