Notes on AI,
decision support, and
the care of newborns.

A working notebook from a neonatologist at the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, UMC Utrecht. Read what I'm building, why I'm skeptical of half of it, and where the field is actually going.

Episode 01 · 13 May 2026 · Substack

The Honest Problem

In late October 2026 I'll stand on a stage in Lyon for twenty minutes and talk about big data, AI, and sepsis prediction in the NICU. I've been quietly uneasy about it ever since. Not about the speaking part — about what I'm supposed to say.

Read on Substack →
Episode 02 · Upcoming

Searching the Evidence — Live

A live PubMed search for late-onset sepsis prediction models, with Claude as the research partner. Queries shown. Methodology explained. The full evidence base for the series begins here.

Coming soon

I'm Daniel Vijlbrief, a neonatologist and clinical researcher at the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, UMC Utrecht. I work on AI implementation in neonatal care — clinical decision support, sepsis prediction, and the unglamorous question of whether any of this actually changes what we do at the bedside.

Lately I've also been working with large language models in clinical workflow — including an AI-generated discharge letter now in routine use on our department, and the experiment you're reading now.

This site is where I think out loud.

Affiliation Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, UMC Utrecht
Speaking CEPAS 2026, Lyon · 31 Oct
Writing road2cepas.substack.com
Contact via Substack comments