We’ve chosen Health Week of Expo 2020 Dubai as the optimal time to host the global Healthcare System Resilience Summit, the latest major event in our Collaboration for a Healthier World Expo programme at the Swedish National Pavilion.
At the Summit, we’re bringing together current and former health ministers, government experts, academics, and private sector partners to explore the urgent reforms and modernisation needed to ensure that health systems are truly resilient and ‘crisis ready’.
Iskra Reic, Executive Vice-President for Europe and Canada, and Executive Vice-President Vaccines and Immune Therapies, outlined in a post for the World Economic Forum (WEF) why the Summit is needed now and how it builds on our existing work as part of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR).
The pandemic has exacerbated the need for health system reform, so that systems can withstand future pressures. That is why AstraZeneca and our public and private sector partners are using this major Summit to call for wider adoption of the PHSSR framework.
We founded the PHSSR shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic with WEF and the London School of Economics (LSE). Phase 1 of the programme saw in-country academics adopt LSE’s health systems resilience framework to analyse the resilience of eight health systems (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, England, Poland, Russia, Vietnam). It also generated four therapy area policy blueprints (chronic kidney disease, heart failure, lung cancer, chronic respiratory diseases).
The Summit will see experts set out how, by applying innovation across five key domains of LSE’s framework – funding, workforce, governance, service delivery, and medicines and technology – health systems can become more resilient and ‘future-ready.’ It will also enable governments to exchange knowledge on the most effective innovations implemented to date in line with the framework.
The PHSSR is grasping the opportunity of this pandemic to act to address global health issues. We are turning research into action by working across nearly 30 countries to identify solutions with the greatest potential and support their adoption worldwide.
We will also formally launch Phase 2 of PHSSR at the Summit, announcing the inclusion of 13 new countries, and will welcome Philips, Apollo Hospitals and KPMG as new PHSSR members.
I know we can only create meaningful, sustained change through collaboration, and by building trust between all parties and stakeholders. This is one big reason why Philips has joined the partnership.
The pandemic underscored the definitive that our collective tomorrow needs the power of partnerships. Hence, the focus of PHSSR to harness global acumen and collaborative relationships will work to accelerate recovery, also hardwire much greater resilience and sustainability into healthcare ecosystems around the world.
