Head of the Department of Internal Medicine & Intensive Care, County Hospital Bregenz, Austria, CEO and Scientific Programme Director, VIVIT Institute, Feldkirch, Austria, Dean of the Medical and Scientific Faculty at Private University of the Principality of Liechtenstein

Prof Drexel studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck and graduated with exceptional honours. He did his specialist training at the University Clinic for Internal Medicine in Innsbruck followed by additional specialist trainings in cardiology, endocrinology, metabolic disease, and angiology. Since then, he has lectured at the University of Innsbruck, and at the University Hospital of Zurich, amongst others. He has also visited the US for several research stays at the St. Elisabeth Medical Centre at Tufts University in Boston, MA.

In 1994, Prof Drexel became Head of the Department for Internal Medicine at the State Hospital Feldkirch (LKHF) and he then founded the Vorarlberg Institute for Vascular Investigation and Treatment (VIVIT), headquartered at the LKHF, and has been its CEO since its origin. Since 2020 he is head of the Department of Internal Medicine & Intensive Care at the County Hospital Bregenz.


A large number of publications in the world’s leading medical journals and extensive reviewer functions for the journals Diabetes Care, Diabetologia, European Heart Journal, etc. are testimony of his intensive publishing activities and his scientific excellence, and he is also a member of national and international advisory boards.


His scientific focus areas are cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolism, cholesterol and pain research. He fulfils his teaching assignment for internal medicine at the LKHF, which is an academic teaching hospital of the Medical University of Innsbruck, by regularly giving lectures about internal medicine and pharmacology.


Prof Drexel is an active member of the scientific committee of the Federal State of Vorarlberg, and titles of honour such as the Fellowship of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), the Fellowship of the American Heart Association (FAHA) and the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh (FRCP Ed.) are amongst his accolades. During 2018-2020 he was the President of the ESC-Working Group in Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.