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Healthcare to Be a Key Topic at SPIEF 2019

21 May 2019
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum business programme will include several sessions and roundtables on healthcare development to discuss implementation of national public health programmes, co-operation of the government and business to achieve national goals, technological development, creation of new medications, and the need for corporate health programmes.

 “Key issues of healthcare including public health, corporate practices, improving health insurance, creating innovative medications and biomedical cell products will be discussed at the forthcoming St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. I am sure that participation of leading experts in different areas, including counterparts from multiple countries will make the talks substantial and effective, and the proposals developed – practical,” noted Veronika Skvortsova, Minister of Health of the Russian Federation.

The session with international participation ‘The Architecture of Public Health: International Experience and National Priorities’ will be held as part of ‘The Russian Economy: Achieving National Development Goals’ pillar. A decrease in preliminary death and increase in life expectancy that have been seen in the past decades are, first of all, associated with implementation of public health programmes. According to experts, at least 2/3 of the life expectancy increase is due to successful execution of these programmes, such as ensuring traffic and labour safety, fighting infectious and non-infectious diseases, reduction of alcohol and tobacco consumption, and reduction of dietary salt and sugar. Availability of healthcare in developed and developing nations, creation of ideal and universal public national health system, and innovative global practices will become key themes of discussion. The session will be moderated by Nick Guldemond, professor of Erasmus University Rotterdam, participants will include Veronika Skvortsova, Minister of Health of the Russian Federation, Patricio Marquez, Lead Public Health Specialist of Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank Group, and others.

A separate session will be dedicated to corporate health programmes. In recent years, corporate health programmes have become one of the major tools to attract the best employees, increase efficiency and personnel engagement, and optimize investments in human resources. Although it is impossible to provide a quantitative assessment of all benefits of these programmes, many countries take measures to incentivise employers to use and finance them. The philosophy of ‘wellbeing’ is a new trend in this area, which is about creating a special culture of promoting healthy lifestyle and conscientious attitude to oneself and one’s own health. The discussion participants will talk about required measures of state support to corporate health programmes extension, tax reliefs as an incentive to introduce health programmes, and criteria of higher efficiency of health programmes.

The ‘Technologies Shaping the Future’ pillar features the session 'Healthcare Transformation: How Will Modern Technologies Change Lives?' Robotics, nuclear medicine, cloud computing, telehealth, artificial intelligence, organ 3D printing – that’s what we already have today. Within the new paradigm, disrupting technologies are the cornerstone of healthcare transformation that will help achieve the three main goals: cost reduction, quality improvement, and availability of care.

Representative of the authorities, scientific and business communities will discuss creating innovative medicines during the same-name session. New medications emerging in the past decades have dramatically changed the course of many conditions. They have turned previously incurable AIDS into a chronic disease and provide 90% survival among leukaemia patients and help cure HCV patients recover. New hopes of researchers are associated with ‘dominating the living matter’ – biomedical cell products, biotechnology, and gene therapy. One of the goals that the Russian government sets in the National Medicines Policy is to create innovative medications in this country by 2030. The session will be attended by Veronika Skvortsova, the Minister of Health of the Russian Federation, Alexei Martynov, President of the Association of Manufacturers of BMCP, Yoshikazu Hayashi, Executive Director at Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency, Mikhail Murashko, Head of the Federal Service on Surveillance in Healthcare, Petr Glybochko, Rector of I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, and others.

Higher availability of medications will be a key theme of the business breakfast ‘Priority Strategies in the Supply of Drugs’. Representatives of the authorities, academic community, and leading Russian and international pharmaceutical companies will discuss improving efficiency of state regulation of the industry and main priorities of the National Medicines Policy.
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