Dr Backus is an emergency physician in Rotterdam in the Netherlands with a great interest in cardiovascular research. Before focusing on emergency medicine she has worked several years in cardiology and together with Jacob Six she developed and validated the HEART score for chest pain patients at the emergency department. She finished her thesis on the HEART score in 2012. Dr Backus has co-authored four books on cardiology and emergency medicine. She is a speaker at several international conferences on cardiology, risk stratification and HEART and a member of the Editorial board of EJEM and a member of EMCREG international.