Prof. Dr. Dr. Andrea Icks has held the Chair of Health Services Research and Health Economics at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2015 and has been head of the institute of the same name at the German Diabetes Center, Leibniz Institute for Diabetes Research in Düsseldorf since 2016. She is deputy spokesperson of the Center for Health and Society at the Faculty of Medicine.
Her research focuses on patient:internally relevant outcomes of care and the cost-benefit ratio of complex interventions. One focus of her research is on patient needs and preferences in terms of patient-centered research. Citizens and patients are actively involved as co-researchers in the sense of participatory research.

Within the framework of DIID, the information needs of patients expressed in Internet forums in particular are investigated using text-mining methods.