Dr Liem was born in Leiden, The Netherlands. He graduates at the Free University College of Medicine in Amsterdam. He completed his residency in anesthesiology, intensive care, and pain management at the St Antonius Hospital in Utrecht. He is board certified in Anesthesiology as well as Pain Medicine by the Dutch Society of Anesthesiology. Dr Liem has, since 1981, extensive experience in the use of interventional pain procedures and implanting neurostimulators to treat chronic pain. After leading the multidisciplinary Pain Unit at the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein, he now works in Maastricht University as a consultant in MUMC +, Dept Anesthesiology and Pain Management.

Furthermore, he is Fellow of International Pain Practice according to the World Institute of Pain and was founder and president of the Benelux Neuromodulation Society. He has been Treasurer of the International Neuromodulation Society and member of the Editorial Board of the journal Neuromodulation. He has been principal investigator on several clinical trials and is participating in international consensus and appropriateness boards on pain and spasticity. He has published several articles and book chapters on pain and neuromodulation and often speaks at national and international conferences in the Netherlands and abroad on pain topics and he is frequently invited to train physicians in the use of pain management techniques. In 2010 Dr Liem received the Sam Hassenbusch prize in Budapest. Over the last years, he has focused on completing his scientific work on stimulation of the dorsal root ganglion for the treatment of chronic pain and obtained his Doctorate of Philosophy at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in January 2016.