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Health First Europe has always believed that by bringing together all health stakeholders, solutions for challenges in healthcare can be found that benefit all patients.  In 2012, we continued in our conviction that together we could better protect patients and improve access to treatment by working with the EU institutions and other EU health stakeholders. This past year, our work on patient safety and health technology assessment (HTA) produced concrete recommendations for policymakers on how the EU can support the improvement and delivery of care for patients.
In 2013, we will not only further our work on patient safety and quality of care, but also expand our issue engagement to look beyond safety and access, to patient empowerment, health literacy and community care.  Encouraging patients to be informed about their care is of great importance as health systems adapt and change to the meet the needs of an ageing population as well as shortages of healthcare professionals and tighter budgets for delivering care.

Innovation is synonymous with progress. Embracing innovation means embracing the need to improve the sustainability and efficiency of healthcare systems by encouraging new business models, unlocking new market opportunities and improving health outcomes. Uptake of innovation in technology and services, however, could be quicker on the European healthcare scene, with myriad barriers currently standing in the way.

Ever since the end of WWII, the reigning clinical philosophy was one whereby there was no limit on medical treatment. From the 80s onwards, this philosophy shifted towards a more balanced approach whereby the benefit of the treatment had to outweigh the potential risks associated with it, with evidence-based medicine being the concept used to assess a new treatment.

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has become a hot topic among the international health community. I am sure that for all healthcare stakeholders achieving UHC would be like a dream come true.

My wife and I are part of the problem. Last weekend we ran respectable 10 kilometre times although we are both in the latter half of our fifties and we will play energetic tennis twice in the week ahead. Both had life expectancies in the early seventies at birth and now our risk adjusted life expectancies are straddle ninety years. We are a triumph for modern lifestyles and medicine (both having had interventions for conditions which may well have been fatal one hundred years ago) yet healthcare is the political scourge of our times. The success of society in increasing healthy productive years is matched by the failure of that same society to plan for such success in the provision of pension, health and social care. Yes, we have a financial crisis which has followed the profligacy of a generation but this is a minor issue compared to the need to rebuild our economic models to accommodate the demographic changes which us ‘baby boomers’ are so central to.

My pulse is already racing at the prospect of this year’s MedTech Forum. The sequence of events following the 2008-2009 banking crisis has played out rather predictably with a broader economic crisis emerging in 2010 and only this year has the full force of public sector impacts been seen as the spending or money printing spree used to avoid deep recession has shifted to efforts to rebalance economies and pay back the debts that were created by ten years of fiscal laxity.

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are the lifeblood of the medical technology industry. Research in the medical technology industry, which typically occurs at the bedside not at the bench, is usually a result of small or micro collaborations between health professionals, academia and SMEs. This research model brings rapid innovation, which quickly tackles current and emerging medical needs. This innovation can only be good news for under-pressure European healthcare systems as there is clear evidence that more effective treatments are capable of delivering clear benefits; reduced hospital stays (with an associated reduction in cost of treatment); better outcomes, and faster rehabilitation and return to society.

Eucomed has recently submitted remote monitoring of implantable cardiac devices as one of its four proposals to the Active and Healthy Ageing Innovation Partnership under the European Commission’s Innovation Union Strategy. Such an initiative is exactly what Europe is in need of to ensure its place at the top of the innovation ladder. Eucomed selected […]

The turn of the year brings all manner of analysis of the events of one year and predictions for the year ahead. 2010 will not be fondly remembered by many as it heralded the impact of the 2008 banking crisis on the real world of citizens and business. For those in the public sector and […]