26 October, 4pm UK

Innovative health technologies are often enthusiastically viewed as game changers however their costs are sharply criticised. Take, for example, CAR T-Cell therapy, which has a price of up to 500,000 euro per person. This raises many questions. For example, what is a fair price for a medicine? How should the price be related to the effectiveness or the number of end-users? What about the risks taken by the company to get the therapy to market? What about the risks taken by the end-user who use the medicine? And what about the risks taken by the payer? Is it unrealistic to think that there is a solution that would be fair to all stakeholders? And how can we ensure that the whole system is financially sustainable in the long term?

13 October, 2021

Timely access to optimal treatment has great promise for significantly improving outcomes for cancer patients. For instance, the early diagnosis and treatment of skin cancer provides a 99% chance of 5-year survival – yet in later stages, the odds drop to just 27%. As well, the length of time it takes for cancer treatments to reach patients is vitally important to European and national cancer policies, including Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.

Current political debates around access cancer medicines often overlook the interplay of factors that cause suboptimal treatment rates. Ineligibility requirements, late diagnostic testing, treatment delays, poorly defined clinical guidelines, and resource constraints worsen a patient’s access to timely and adequate treatments.

How can we ensure that patients are diagnosed promptly and can access treatment in a timely manner? Why does reimbursement not always correlate to access to innovative treatments across Europe? How should we prioritize treatment rates in cancer plans?

28 September, 2021, 2-3pm CET

In Europe, 2.4 million patients undergo high-risk surgery every year and while surgery is safer today than ever – it is not totally risk free, Evidence suggest that death during surgery is now rare but the 30 days after the procedure are crucial – more than 1 in 100 adults (1.5%) die in the first 30 days following their operation. During high-risk surgery it is vital that blood continues to flow to organs. If blood pressure drops, and organs do not get enough blood, the higher the risk of severe postoperative complications, such as myocardial injury, acute kidney injury, and increased mortality, These drops in blood pressure are known as intraoperative hypotension (IOH) and are common – particularly in more senior patients. As little as a minute of IOH can increase the risk of patient harm or death and there is low awareness of this urgent issue among patients, clinicians, and policy makers. However, if IOH is effectively monitored and managed, many of these issues can be reduced or avoided. In addition, the need to improve perioperative care has been accentuated by the pandemic, which has put pressure on hospital capacity.

24 August 2021, 4pm UK

What do developments of smart hospitals and smart homes mean for patients, health professionals and policy makers? Better diagnostics? Better medicines? Greater efficiency? Nowadays use of the term artificial intelligence (AI) elicits all sorts of reactions, from enthusiasm to fear. How much are these reactions well-founded? One thing is clear: when it comes to health, AI can be applied in myriad ways, from all of the departments in a hospital to all corners of one’s home.

Given the patchy performance of public health approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the benefit of hindsight, how can we better harness available data to improve decision making for improved societal health, cost management, and patient outcomes – better safety of medicines, control of long-term conditions and solutions for rare/orphan diseases?