Conference sub-theme 1: governance and leadership

Governance and leadership of health systems involve researching and setting up strategic objectives, making policies, and developing laws and regulations while securing and deploying the necessary resources, skills and competencies to accomplish strategic goals. In the past year, the role of health governance and leadership has been in the spotlight as the effect of health leaders’ decisions have been observed and scrutinised.

This year, a particular interest is in discussing what governance for a healthy population look like (vision, values) and how different governance models and leadership styles can address, not only health outcomes but also challenges relating to

• Operations management, logistics and procurement
• Bureaucracy and administrative burdens in health systems
• Transdisciplinary and multisectoral approaches, innovative approaches, evaluation, and improvement
• Value-based healthcare
• Managing hospital and acute services
• Quality and safety (e.g. administrative simplification as a performance indicator)
• Response to COVID-19, and developing agile healthcare organisations for managing emergencies

Conference sub-theme 2: person-centeredness and care integration

The transition towards person-centred care requires health care systems to be integrated and to be co-created with patients and their families. Health managers must consider the personal needs, preferences, behaviours, and attitudes of individuals while guaranteeing high-quality care for all. In the current context, how can health leadership support this shift in their organisation and health system? What tools, services, and innovations can participate in facilitating this change? What do patients want and how can that be effectively measured and used?

Some of the topics of interest within this topic are:

• Personalised medicine
• Improving the quality of care and mental wellbeing
• Improving patient experience
• Coordination of services within and across sectors
• Integrated care
• Accountability strengthening
• How to balance evidence-based healthcare management and patient preferences

Conference sub-theme 3: managing the digital transformation

In the past year, there has been a substantial increase in demand for digital health services and technologies, and they have been deployed in unprecedented ways to manage the pandemic and support the provision of other essential care services. However there remain concerns, questions, and challenges around technological change and implementation of digital health at local, national, and European levels.

What are the international lessons learned, commonalities and differences amongst countries of the world? How can those learnings and experiences be transferred across borders? How does organisational governance and leadership affect the assessment, implementation, and management of digital technologies (e.g. design-thinking approach, lean-agile management, etc.)? What is the return on investment in health technology?

These are some of the questions that will be discussed, along with:

• How artificial intelligence and aggregated data are shaping the future of health management
• GDPR and management of personal data.
• Digital markets and communication
• Electronic health records and data sharing
• Continuity of Care Records
• Cross-border interoperability of Electronic Health Records (EHR)

Conference sub-theme 4: improving healthcare access and outcomes

For health systems to respond to ongoing and emerging health challenges, they must better address existing disparities in access to health services and ensure that they are not exacerbating or creating discrimination that leaves certain population groups behind. How are health leaders taking those groups into consideration? How can health systems meet their needs? Vulnerable and high-risk groups may include but not be limited to people with chronic illnesses and long-term needs, migrants, the ageing population, people with low socio-economic status, etc.

This topic will address the disparities in health care access and outcomes and discuss some possible avenues to address them, such as:

• Benefits of the realisation of the larger merger of health and social care and long-term contracts
• Development of national chronic disease plans and programmes
• Overcoming resistance to a clinical and managerial change
• Designing new roles in chronic management models, such as for primary care
• Payment models

Conference sub-theme 5: environmental sustainability of health services

Health systems are major consumers of energy and resources at the facility level and in the procurement processes for goods and services. The European Commission, Member States, and individual health system stakeholders are implementing measures and policies to address the environmental sustainability of health systems, but there remain gaps in the evidence to support the implementation of environmentally-friendly measures, among other things.

Within this topic, we will discuss different policies and areas of interests, such as:

• The EU Green Agenda
• Sustainable procurement and Circular economy
• Green healthcare
• Organisational and architectural levers
• Building the technological hospital of the future

Conference sub-theme 6: health workforce

Health system capacities are being stretched in unprecedented ways. Europe is experiencing shortages of healthcare workers, the needs of patients are rising; the need for changes in health systems are becoming more pressing; and the demand for more health professionals and specialised health professionals is increasing. Those factors are creating more pressures on the existing health workforce and placing their needs and those of the future health workforce higher on the policy agenda. Some of the questions that are being raised are: does the health workforce have the appropriate tools to face the challenges of their health system? What do they need to continue to support the health system? And how do we ensure new health management graduates have the right skills for the future?

Within this topic, we will cover some of the following points:

• Increasing skills and competencies
• Shortage of professionals
• Mobility
• Middle management skill mix
• How to update hard and soft skills for healthcare managers
• Essential competencies in graduate students.
• What will be the skills of the leader of the future?
• Accreditation