SPEAKERS 2021
Plenary Speakers
Adelina Comas Herrera
Adelina Comas-Herrera is co-lead of the Strengthening Responses to Dementia in Developing Countries (STRiDE) project. Funded by the Research Councils UK Global Challenges Research Fund, STRiDE is a multi-national project covering Brazil, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, and South Africa. The project aims to build capacity to generate research that supports the development of policy responses to dementia, with related projects also under way in Hong Kong and New Zealand. She is the curator of LTCcovid.org, an initiative linked to International Long-Term Care Policy Network that shares evidence and resources to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 amongst those who use and provide long-term care.
Alexandre Lourenco
Lourenço serves as President of the Portuguese Association of Hospital Managers, Board and Executive Committee member of the European Association of Hospital Managers (EAHM), Board Member of the European Health Management Association and Honorary Fellow of the Brazilian College of Health Executives. Additionally he is an Affiliate Member of Nova SBE Health Economics and Management Knowledge Centre and Guest Lecturer on Healthcare Management Executive Training Programmes at the Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics and NOVA SBE. He works as Hospital Administrator at Coimbra University and Hospital Centre, the major hospital in Portugal with nearly 2,000 acute beds. Since 2014, he has been a consultant for the World Health Organization, providing technical assistance on health systems’ strengthening and financing. He is also Vice-Chair of the Technical Advisory Group on Tuberculosis Control for WHO-E. Lourenço has also co-authored several healthcare policy documents, book chapters, scientific papers and has presented keynote talks all over the world.
Annamaria Müller
Annamaria Müller is President of the Board of Directors of the Friborg Hospital (HFR). She is economist and former Head of the Hospital Office at the Department of Public Health and Social Welfare of the Canton of Bern.
Axel Kaehne
Axel Kaehne joined Edge Hill as a Senior Research Fellow in April 2013. He was appointed Reader in Health Service Research in 2016 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Integrated Care. He is currently President of EHMA, the European Health Management Association (Brussels).
Axel has designed and delivered evaluations of health improvement programmes in England and Wales and is also member of the Children’s Nursing Research Unit at Alder Hey, the Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
He leads the Special Interest Group for Integrated Care of the European Health Management Association and works with colleagues across England to establish an Integrated Care Researcher Network. He is teaching Research Methodologies, Quantitative Approaches and Statistics/SPSS on the MCh and MRes course in the faculty and supervises currently three PhD students and several Master’s students. He is leading a module in Strategic Clinical Leadership and the dissertation module for the MCh (taught) degree.
Carmen Laplaza Santos
Carmen Laplaza works for the European Commission where she is currently the Head of Unit in the Health Innovations & Ecosystems Unit within the DirectorateGeneral for Research and Innovation.
Prior to holding this position, she was the Deputy Head of Unit of the Innovative and Personalised
Medicine Unit within the same Directorate-General. Carmen has also worked for the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology where she was Deputy Head of the E-Health, Wellbeing and Ageing Unit after being responsible for the budget sector, dealing mainly with the financial implementation of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and the Horizon 2020 research framework programmes.
Before joining the European Commission in 2008 she held senior roles in financial and strategic departments of different sectors, such as retail, advertising and banking. Carmen studied at the University of Navarra, Spain where she obtained a degree in Economics in 1994.
Ceri Thompson
Ceri Thompson is Deputy Head of the eHealth, Well-Being and Ageing Unit in DG CNECT. Ceri worked previously on international cooperation for Eurostat, and on health issues in DG SANTE. Before joining the EU institutions, Ceri worked on global health policy at the UK’s Department for International Development, and for KPMG’s international healthcare practice, conducting strategic and efficiency reviews of health systems in the CARICOM and EECCA regions, and of various London hospitals.
She has experience across a range of EU health policy areas, including nutrition & physical activity, alcohol and drugs, tobacco, pharmaceutical policy and health inequalities. She started her career working on a large, epidemiological field research project in Fortaleza, North East Brazil.
She studied mathematics at Durham University (UK). She has an MSc (medical statistics/epidemiology) and a DrPH (health economics) both from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Chris Santer
Chris joined PHP Plc in October 2017 and has over 25 years real estate investment and development experience in the UK and continental Europe. PHP has invested £2.6bn into primary care real estate since its establishment 25 years ago and owns 515 medical centres in the UK and Republic of Ireland. PHP’s goal is to ‘invest in the health of our communities’ and strongly believes that modern, purpose built primary care premises are a key foundation from which healthcare systems can offer high quality and affordable healthcare solutions for their populations.
Chris has an MBA from Warwick Business School, is a Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and a member of the British Property Federation Healthcare Panel.
Clayton Hamilton
Clayton Hamilton leads the digital health flagship programme within the WHO Regional Office for Europe’s Division for Country Health Policies and Systems, providing support and guidance on all aspects of digital health and innovation to support health systems strengthening and reform in the Region’s 53 Member States.
With a background in ICT development and business management and over 22 years of UN experience working in the fields of technology, digital health, and public health, Mr. Hamilton provides strategic guidance to assist countries in their development of national digital health programmes within the framework of delivering on WHO’s triple billion targets and in working towards the achievement of the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In working to accelerate the uptake of safe and inclusive digital health services for all, Mr. Hamilton leads the development of dialogue and regional guidance on digital health and innovation, establishes partnerships with major international stakeholders working to reform health systems and public health, and provides thought leadership on the adoption of frontier digital technologies to improve access to healthcare and empower individuals in their choices for better health and well-being.
Ellen Kuhlmann
Dr. Ellen Kuhlmann is the President of the EUPHA section on Health Workforce Research, and Senior Researcher at the Hannover Medical School in Germany.
Dr Kuhlmann’s research focuses on four areas with a particular interest in international comparison and global health: (1) healthcare systems, policy and governance, (2) health workforce governance and professions, (3) organization and management, (4) gender and public health. Her research interests reflect her own professional background and education as a registered nurse specialised in intensive care/anaesthesiology, Master Public Health, and Ph.D. and post-doc qualification (Habilitation) in sociology.
George Valiotis
George has extensive European and international experience to this role, having worked in executive roles specializing in health policy, research, systems thinking, management, human rights, education and training. He is a Greek and has lived and worked in Switzerland, France, Australia, Belgium, and Scotland. Before joining EHMA, he worked as Chief Executive Officer of HIV Scotland for seven years, managing multiple strategic policy and education collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, researchers, policy makers, insurers, health services, community members, and professional medical bodies. Earlier he was an education specialist for the International AIDS Society, developing global initiatives for pre and post doctoral researchers in prevention, clinical and biomedical research. He also served on the Board of Diabetes Australia and as an Advisor on its Medical Education and Science Council. In these roles he helped govern the National Diabetes Services Scheme which was a €65 million government contract to supply medical products, education, and services. He is also engaged as a consultant on various projects including: as the Principal Strategic Advisory to the Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland), and; as an associate on biomedical citizen projects with the Medical School fo the University of Edinburgh.
Hans Kluge
Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge began his term as WHO Regional Director for Europe on 1 February 2020, following his nomination by the WHO Regional Committee for Europe and appointment by the WHO Executive Board.
He has 25 years of experience in medical practice and public health in numerous settings around the world. Having qualified in medicine, surgery and obstetrics from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1994, he began his career as a family doctor in Belgium.
Izabela Grape
The Breast Cancer Society Amazona in Stockholm is an organization consisting of members who are diagnosed with breast cancer and others who are related to diagnosed persons.
· Our vision is that no one should have to suffer from breast cancer.
· Our mission is for everyone in Stockholm County to have the right to the best-known breast cancer care.
· Our promise to our members is that no one should have to be alone with their breast cancer.
The Breast Cancer Society Amazona want to give support and information to our members and to influence the health professionals to take care of their patients with the best-known treatments while they also treat the individual with dignity and care.
We arrange a variety of activities for our members. Many of the activities take place in collaboration with healthcare professionals, such as medical specialists giving lectures on different aspects related to breast cancer. We also arrange several social and rehabilitation activities, such as discussion groups, retreats, water gymnastics, yoga, city walks, etc.
When you have got a breast cancer diagnosis, it is common for you to feel worried, scared and exposed. To support breast cancer patients we have trained support persons that can assist in the process to accept the diagnosis, give an understanding of what is going to happen and help with good advice, for example how to get a good-looking wig.
Representatives of the association regularly meet with representatives of the different breast cancer treating hospitals in Stockholm (Karolinska Sjukhuset, Södersjukhuset and St Görans Sjukhus) to discuss different patient issues and to encourage a really good care for breast-cancer patients, always with the patient in the center.
We publish a magazine with 4 issues per year that addresses what happens in the association, refers lectures and addresses various aspects of cancer care.
The work of the association is based on non-profit work from the officials in the association. Our work is funded through member fees and grants from various organizations that support a specific activity. The number of activities we can arrange is fully dependent on what funding we can get.
Josep Figueras
Josep Figueras, MD, MPH, PhD (econ) is the Director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. In addition to WHO, he has served major multilateral organizations such as the European Commission and the World Bank. He has served as policy advisor in more than 40 countries within Europe and beyond. He is a member of several governing, advisory and editorial boards, including the board of the European Health Forum Gastein.
His research focuses on comparative health system and policy analysis. He is an editor of the Observatory series published by Open University Press, and has published a wide range of volumes in this field, most recently: “Health systems governance” (2015); “Economic crisis: impact and implications for health systems policy in Europe” (2014); “Health systems, health and wealth: assessing the case for investing in health systems” (2012); “Health professional mobility and health systems. Evidence from 17 European countries” (2011); and “Cross-border health care in the European Union. Mapping and analysing practices and policies” (2011).
Marius Ungureanu
Dr. Marius Ungureanu is Chief of Staff of the Minister of Health of Romania. He is also a Lecturer at the Department of Public Health where he serves as Director of Education.
Dr. Ungureanu has been trained as a medical doctor and has completed a residency program in family medicine. Over time, he completed his education in public and healthcare management with a Master in Health Administration and a PhD in medicine/public health. Dr. Ungureanu’s work is focused on producing evidence for policymaking in health systems. In his academic work, he has studied the impact of health workforce policies on health professionals’ retention in Romania. Dr. Ungureanu’s work has been published in leading peer-review journals, such as The Lancet and Health Policy.
Apart from his academic work, Dr. Ungureanu has provided consulting services to the World Health Organization, International Labor Organization and OECD. Dr. Ungureanu is a member of the European Public Health Association’s (EUPHA) Governing Board and has served as a Deputy Health Minister.
Maurizio Cecconi
Prof. Maurizio Cecconi is the President of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM). He is also the Head of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Department at Istituto Clinico Humanitas and a full professor of Anaesthesia and ICU at the Humanitas University.
Prof. Cecconi has worked in different healthcare systems, including the UK NHS & Private and Italy NHS & Private. He has a strong background in research and has been an active voice in the field of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, clinical research, clinical trials, and health policies and guidelines. ICU Management & Practice spoke to Prof. Cecconi about his experience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.
Rosanna Tarricone
Rosanna Tarricone is the Associate Dean at SDA Bocconi School of Management and Associate Professor in Public Administration at Università Bocconi, Department of Social and Political Science, Milan. She graduated in Business Administration at Università Bocconi and holds an MSc in Health Services Management and a PhD in Public Health and Policy, both from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, UK. She has over 100 publications in the areas of health policy, healthcare management, the economic analysis of health care services and health technology assessment (HTA).
Rosanna serves as an expert for the DG Research and DG Health of the European Commission. She facilitates the continuous exchange of experiences and harmonization of methods and procedures between the HTA Agencies of the EU Member States within EUnetHTA. Since 2007 Rosanna has been an advisor for the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Italy and has contributed to the design and development of the National Programme of HTA for Medical Devices. She is part of the Panel of Experts aimed at advising the MoH on the future of the Italian National Health Service.
Sessions speakers
Aaron Reeves
Aaron Reeves is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at Oxford University, a Fellow of Green Templeton College, and a Visiting Senior Fellow in the International Inequalities Institute at the LSE. He is a sociologist working on public health, political economy, and elites.
Adriana Voicu
Since her Masters graduation in European Affairs (Sciences Po Paris, France), Adriana has worked as a European Project Manager for Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) and for INRA Transfert. She has also been involved as a Field Research Expert in the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) studies, and had the chance to make a procurement internship at UN Women headquarters in New York.
Adriana is responsible for the general management of the EU financed research project COVIRNA. She monitors the implementation of the project and of the work plan, provides support in planning, producing and reviewing the deliverables and the outcomes. She monitors all contractual obligations, while she is the interface between the funding agency and the consortia. The animation/information of the networks/partners, as the monitoring of the project budget and the developing/implementing of management tools, are also part of her role.
Andrew Corbett-Nolan
Andrew Corbett-Nolan is the chief executive of GGI and has worked in healthcare since joining the NHS in 1987. He specialises in board development work and some of the more complex governance reviews that GGI undertakes.
· He has led many of the important programmes of work undertaken by GGI, including the development of the new governance arrangements for Clinical Research Networks, the review of the Welsh Healthcare Specialist Services Commissioning, the development of the Good Governance Handbook and the development of governance review tools for NHS England.
· Andrew has held multiple executive and non-executive leadership roles in large, complex and national healthcare and regulatory organisations in the UK. He worked internationally for Humana, the USA Fortune 100 healthcare insurer and the Joint Commission International as well as academic work at the Nelson Mandela Medical School in Durban and Luis University in Rome. He was international consultant for COHSASA in Cape Town, Director of the Governance Office for the European Society for Quality in Healthcare and is currently a member of the European Healthcare Futures Forum and a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow. He has contributed to many international Forums, including with EHMA, ISQua, The Romanian Hospital Federation, NTVZ in the Netherlands and the BMJ/IHI quality and safety forum.
Anna Sagan
Anna Sagan is the Editor-in-Chief of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies’ Policy Briefs series. She works in the Observatory’s London hub, sharing her time between the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
She is also author and editor of Observatory studies, most recently on private health insurance, Health Systems in Transition (HiT) reviews, and Health country profiles – Health Systems and Policy Monitor (HSPM) and COVID-19 Health Systems Response Monitor (HSRM) profiles and State of Health in the EU (SoHEU) profiles. Anna obtained her master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Jagiellonian University in Poland.
Anniek de Ruijter
Anniek de Ruijter is Associate Professor of Health Law and Policy at University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), and Director and Initiator of the Law Centre for Health and Life. Her research focuses on questions regarding constitutional safeguards for health-specific rights and values, particularly also in the context of EU and global regulatory interactions. She has expertise in theoretical and legal analyses, which she combines with qualitative social science approaches. She works in interdisciplinary collaboration within biomedical, public health and social science consortia and is the co-lead on two research interdisciplinary research consortia, on Global Health and on AI Decision-making in Health. Her research on improving the EU constitutional order for responding to human health disasters such as pandemics or bioterrorist attacks was awarded a personal grant of research excellence (2017) by the Dutch Scientific Research Organization, and she is currently working on a H2020 research on EU-India relations regarding access to pandemic vaccines. She is a Board member of Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Section on Public Health and Law of the European Public Health Association, and co-initiator of the European Health Union Manifesto initiative (with the Gastein Forum).
Birgit Beger
From 1 August 2020, Birgit Beger is the Chief Executive Officer of the European Heart Network. She has more than fifteen years of public affairs experience in Brussels and an impressive track record in European health policy and federation management. She was Secretary General of the Standing Committee of European Doctors (CPME) for over 5 years. Before her post as CPME Secretary General, she was Senior Legal advisor at the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) responsible inter alia for Information Technology Law and European Contract Law.
Birgit Beger is a registered lawyer in Berlin and holds masters in law and political science from Freie Universität Berlin.
Calin Bumbulut
After graduation at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iuliu Haţieganu in Cluj in 1995, he followed the residency training in General Medicine for adults and children, becoming specialist physician in Family Medicine in 1998, and senior physician in 2002. Since 2001 he is trainer in Family Medicine, from 2000 he us certified in General Ultrasonography, starting from 2004 in Enterprise Medicine, and since 2008 he is Trainer of Trainers (ToT) in Family Medicine.
He followed postgraduate training programs in Electrocardiography, Ultrasonography, Pre-Hospital Emergency Primary Care and Preventive Priorities at Adult and Child, Occupational Medicine, Screening for Breast, Cervical and Colon Cancer. He was lecturer in several postgraduate courses and training programs.
Currently he is Family Physician and Medical Coordinator for a team of 4 doctors in a group practice. He is also the President of Satu Mare Family Physicians Association since 2002, and the President of Satu Mare College of Physicians since 2011.
In 2011, he was elected as Vice-President of Romanian College of Physicians, and Coordinator of Professional, Scientific and Medical Education Department (www.cmr.ro), re-elected in 2016 and 2020 in the same position.
Since his country joined at European Union of General Practitioners/Family Physicians – UEMO, he was designated as the head of Romanian delegation; in 2015 he was elected as Vice-President, and in 2017 President of UEMO for the mandate 2019-2022 (www.uemo.eu).
Caroline Costongs
Caroline Costongs is Director of EuroHealthNet, the European Partnership for improving health, social equity and wellbeing, based in Brussels. Caroline leads a multi-disciplinary team working on European Union and (sub)national policy, advocacy, research and capacity building addressing health inequalities. Caroline is active in various EU and WHO fora, as well as in Advisory Boards such as for APHEA (Public Health Education Accreditation Agency) and is a member of the ICC – International Council for the European Public Health Conference.
Caroline has a strong international background with 25+ years of public health and health promotion experience. In 1992 she started her career as a researcher at the National Capacity Building Institute (INICE) of the Honduras Ministry of Education. She subsequently worked for the Health Institute of the Liverpool John Moores University and the Netherlands Olympic Committee and Sports Confederation (NOC*NSF) linking health and physical activity. In 2000, she joined the European Network of Health Promoting Agencies (ENHPA), where she helped establish EuroHealthNet as a not-for-profit association with legal statutes in Belgium.
Caroline graduated from the University of Maastricht with a MSc in Public Health.
Christian Felter
Dr. Christian Felter, MD is Associate VP, Global Medical Expert for Nosocomial Vaccines for Sanofi Pasteur based in Lyon, France. His focus is on their investigative Clostridium difficile vaccine. Dr. Felter has 11 years of experience in medical affairs roles in the US and Europe, covering therapeutic areas including Immunology, Rheumatology, and Infectious Diseases. Prior to Joining Sanofi Pasteur he was with Astellas Pharma, where he was Global Medical Affairs Director responsible for the Infectious Disease portfolio. He was responsible for the European medical strategy for the Fidaxomicin launch in 2011. Dr. Felter also served in roles with Merck Serono, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, and Wyeth in the UK and US.
Dimitra Panteli
Dimitra Panteli joined the Senior Management Team of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies on October 1, 2020. Prior to this she spent more than a decade at the Department of Health Care Management at Berlin University of Technology, where she was a senior research fellow, the Department`s research coordinator (2017-2020) and a frequent contributor of the Observatory’s research.
Dimitra’s work focuses on evidence- based decision-making in health care, primarily health technology assessment, and health systems research, for example on pharmaceutical regulation and quality assurance. She regularly collaborates with diverse stakeholders, including Ministries of Health, regulatory institutions, insurers, national institutes for public health and quality assurance, health technology assessment agencies, and professional associations.
She received her doctorate in public health from Berlin University of Technology, her MScPH. from the Charité Medical University in Berlin (as a scholar of the German Academic Exchange Service) and her Medical Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).
Donata Meroni
Donata Meroni is Head of the Unit ‘Health promotion, disease prevention and funding instruments’, of DG SANTE Public Health Directorate, European Commission. She was previously Head of the Unit ‘Health and food safety’ in the Executive Agency CHAFEA in Luxembourg.
She has been working with the Commission since 2002, when she joined DG SANCO to work at the Food and Veterinary Office in Ireland as a plant health inspector.
In 2006, she moved to Public Health Directorate in Luxembourg, working as deputy head in the ‘Health Programme’ Unit dealing with the second and third Health Programmes and health communication issues. From 2013 to 2017 she worked in the ‘Country Knowledge and Scientific Committees’ Unit managing the Secretariat of the Commission Scientific Committees on Health, Environmental and emerging risks (SCHEER) and on Consumers Safety (SCCS) and dealing with EMF dossier.
Donata is a chartered agronomist with a Master’s degree in Agricultural Sciences from Milan University and she worked in Italy for more than 13 years in both the private and public sectors.
Ellie Brooks
Eleanor Brooks is a lecturer in health policy in the Global Health Policy Unit at the University of Edinburgh, and a scientific advisor to the European Public Health Alliance, Brussels. She holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, studying the impact of the Better Regulation Agenda on European Union health policy, and her broader research explores the changing governance of health within the EU.
Ellie Dow
Dr. Ellie Dow, orignially from Troon in Ayshire, received her Bachelor of Science (Hons) from University of Glasgow, qualified in Medicine from the Middlesex Hospital, London, and gained her PhD in Molecular Genetics from Imperial College, University of London. Postgraduate training in laboratory medicine was at St Mary’s Hospital in London. She currently works as Consultant Chemical Pathologist in the department of Blood Sciences, based at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, and has previously held the posts of Joint Clinical Lead for the North of Scotland region laboratories and Director of Research and Development for NHS Tayside. She has iongstanding interests in the use of laboratory information technology, particularly in improving the clinical interface between users and the laboratory, as well as in Diabetes, liver disease and cardiac troponins. Dr Dow leads the laboratory team for the Intelligent Liver Pathway.
Elly Breedveld
Elly Breedveld, MSc, PhD, is Director at Perspekt (since September 2020), a quality institute in Dutch health care that focuses on stimulating and accounting for quality from a vision, in which values and results for the client are central. Perspekt supports providers of care and welfare in working on continuous quality improvement through the PREZO quality system and the narrative quality model PREZO Care based on dialogue.
Since 1991 Elly Breedveld worked in the health care sector as an educator, strategic advisor, coach and researcher in the field of health policy and management. She acquired, managed and conducted policy-oriented research and consultancy projects for various commissioning organizations.
Prior to joining Perspekt she worked as an independent entrepreneur at Elly Breedveld Consulting, was Programme Director of the Erasmus Executive Master of Health Business Administration (MBA-Health) at the Erasmus Centre for Health Care Management (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands), Strategic advisor of the Board of Directors of a large Dutch integrated long-term care and home care organization and Coordinator Academic Collaborative Centers at the Scientific Centre for Transformation in Healthcare and Welfare (Tranzo / Tilburg University) in cooperation with healthcare providers.
She was member and vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees of several healthcare organizations in the Netherlands (since 2001) and member of the Board of the European Health Management Association (since 2016).
Elly Breedveld studied Health Policy and Management at the Erasmus University Rotterdam from 1986 till 1991. In 2003 she defended her PhD thesis on the introduction of market incentives and the reform of the Dutch home care sector, at Tilburg University.
Eric Schordan
After a PhD in Molecular Pharmacology in 2005 at the medical school of Strasbourg, Dr. Eric Schordan spent 8 years in academia research as postdoc in Germany. In 2013, he joined Firalis groups as head of molecular diagnostics department to develop technologies and biomarker projects. His group developed several innovative products as Biopred, Fimics or more recently NeuroLINCS. In 2019, he was promoted Chief Scientific Officer of Firalis Molecular Precision and in 2021 Chief Business Officer of the company.
Erica Richardson
Erica is a member of the Observatory’s London hub and is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Her work focuses on the development of health systems and health policy in Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. She edits Health System Reviews (HiTs) for countries in this region and supports the State of Health in the EU programme as well as covering health system and policy developments in the United Kingdom. Erica also supports the Observatory’s knowledge brokering programme, particularly policy dialogues and webinars, which allows her to mobilize her interest in science communication.
Erica is an honorary Associate Professor in LSHTM’s Centre for Global Chronic Conditions and an honorary research fellow at, the Centre for Russian, Eurasian and European Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham where she completed her PhD.
Erin Webb
Erin has been a member of the Observatory’s Berlin hub since January 2019 at the Technical University of Berlin’s Department of Health Care Management. Erin supports a variety of Observatory projects, including the State of Health in the EU programme, the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor, and rapid responses.
She serves as the Health Systems and Policy Monitor editor for Estonia and Hungary. Erin holds a Master’s in Healthcare Policy, Innovation and Management from Maastricht University and previously worked in the United States on projects for the Affordable Care Act.
Fausto Pinto
Professor Fausto Pinto is President of the World Heart Federation. He graduated from Lisbon University Medical School in 1984. He did his Cardiology internship at Santa Maria University Hospital – CHLN, E.P.E. (Lisbon, Portugal), and Stanford University Medical School (CA, USA), where he was a Clinical Fellow. He was then Clinical Attending in the Echocardiography laboratory and underwent an Interventional Cardiology Fellowship at the same institution.
He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon (Lisbon, Portugal), and Full Professor of Cardiology. He is also the Head of the Cardiology Department and of the Heart and Vascular Department of Santa Maria University Hospital, CHLN E.P.E., and the Director of Lisbon Cardiovascular Institute (ICVL) since 1999.
Federico Lega
Prof. Federico Lega, Ph.D, is a member of the EHMA Board and Professor of Health Administration at Milan University, Italy. In the last ten years, he has advised several companies of the medical industry on their transformation toward value-based models and for the development of effective market-access initiatives. Since 2002 he has coordinated over fifteen initiatives of duality or study-tour, involving the exchange of managers and senior clinicians between countries (Italy, UK, USA, Germany and France).
He currently seats in the boards of hospitals and local health authorities, advises health departments of Regions, national health agencies and insurances, and worked as a consultant for WHO. Since 2015 is acting as Editor in Chief of the journal Health Services Management Research, Associate Editor of BMC health services research and Medical Care Research Review. He has published eight books and over 150 articles on journals.
Fidelia Cascini
Assistant Professor at the Department of Hygiene and Public Health at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, (Italy), she teaches on general and applied hygiene, risk management, health statistics.
She has been a member of the Task Force Data Coordination Unit, as established in March 2020 by the Prime Minister’s office for the Covid-19 emergency.
She’s advisor of the Directorate General for Digitalisation of the Ministry of Health and involved in European and international activities on digital health such as EU Joint Actions as TEHDAS and X-eHealth.
She has been engaged by the World Health Organization (WHO) for “Drawing up a country snapshot on the role of public health agencies and services in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy” within a global WHO project on how to strengthen public health.
She cooperates as HSPM for Italy at the European Observatory on Health Care Systems and Policies of WHO.
She’s member of the Steering Committee of the Research Center “Safety and Quality of Care for Protection of Patient and Health Profession” at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.
She’s responsible for the Research Program of Fondazione Italia In Salute as manager and coordinator of the researches carried out on the issues of patient safety, health planning for the improvement of services, Health Technology Assessment (HTA), health policies, good clinical practices and guidelines, and organizational models for the healthcare risk management.
Received a Ph.D. in 2007 she was involved in national and international projects at the Sapienza University of Rome and at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore to 2011; from 2012 to 2018 project manager of two research projects that won competitive calls funded by the European Commission, Directorate: Justice (TDT_JUST/2011/ISEC/DRUGS/AG/3670) and Home Affairs (PRIDE_HOME/2014/JDRU/AG/DRUG/7074).
She was (2018-2019) principal investigator at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in the national multi-center project funded by Fondazione Sanità Futura (MI), in collaboration with the University of Pavia, the Vita-Salute S. Raffaele University of Milan and the IRCCS Casimiro Mondino of Pavia, entitled “Design and implementation of an organizational model for the healthcare risk management”.
Holder of International Patent (USA and Europe) for the invention Nr. PCT/EP2016/075403 “Genetic markers for distinguishing of the phenotype of a cannabis sativa sample” published on 26.04.2018 with publication number WO2018/072845.
Author of 3 monographs about healthcare risk management. Author of 33 scientific research papers, of which 23 are indexed on Scopus (almost always appearing as first author) and of publications on Q1- and Q2-level journals for research in the field of toxicology and digital technologies. Guest Editor of a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Public Health (IF 2019: 2.483) about Digital Health currently being prepared.
Florian Tille
Florian Tille is a member of the Observatory’s London hub and is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
His work focuses on evidence-informed health policy and health care for strengthening health systems in Europe, and particularly on the Observatory’s analytical pillar on health systems innovation and the way organizational change is adopted (or not). He supports country monitoring (particularly Balkan countries) and contributes to knowledge brokering with evidence briefings and policy dialogues.
Florian is also central to the collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for Europe (EURO), Division of Country Health Policies and Systems and is bringing inputs and evidence in the areas of health systems performance and governance, with a focus on essential health services.
Prior to joining the Observatory, Florian was a Junior Professional Officer with the Integrated Health Services Department at WHO Headquarters in Geneva, working on quality of care, health services resilience, emergency preparedness and response. Before that, he worked at the International Department of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health, as well as with the country’s National Association of Physicians.
Florian holds a doctorate in public health from the Charité Medical University in Berlin, a Master of Public Policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and a BA from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Florian Rüter
Florian Rüter MD, Head of Quality Management at University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, joined the Chief Medical Office 2018. Experienced in surgical quality and patient safety he was designated to push distribution of PROMs embedded in the hospital strategy concept of Value Based Health Care.
“I am convinced that PROM’s are the main key initiating a fundamental change process integrating the ideas of value based health care in daily practice.”
Florian Rüter, cardiac surgeon, received his medical degree in Germany. Beside surgical education the focus on the organization of heart transplant programs led him to Basel where he complemented his interests by clinical and quality management. He graduated “Leadership in health care” and “Team dynamics under change and coaching” (Northwest
Swiss University of Applied Science) and completed Harvard Business School Executive Education “Strategy for Health Care Delivery” in 2019.
François Sandre
Francois SANDRE is the Head of Europe region for Sanofi Pasteur. He has 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with a variety of experiences and skills in global marketing, franchise management, and strategic planning as well as business case development.
Francois is responsible for the development and overall strategy in strengthening Sanofi Pasteur’s business in the Europe region, after being in charge for the same responsibilities for Asia and JPAC region. He oversees the growth and commercialization of Sanofi Pasteur’s portfolio of vaccines, ensuring smooth operations across the region with sustainable revenue streams.
He began his career with Sanofi Pasteur in product management and global marketing before transitioning to a leadership role in Franchise Management, including leading the Pediatric Franchise, where his experience ranges from franchise and lifecycle strategy, product launches, contributing to optimal product supply plans, and strategic guidance for product allocations. He assumed the role of Vice President of Franchise and Product Strategy, where he led 4 franchises and 5 transversal platforms, including Value and Access, Innovation, and New Technologies, to strategize the identification of vaccine targets and market access.
Francois received his Doctorate of Pharmacy and his Masters in Pharmaceutical Marketing from the University of Lyon in 1997.
He is also an alumnus of INSEAD, IMD and MCE executive programs.
Gemma Williams
Gemma Williams is a member of the Observatory’s London hub and is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Before joining the Observatory, Gemma worked as a Research Officer at LSE Health and as an ODI Fellow Health Economist in the Rwandan Ministry of Health.
Hayley Welsh
Hayley Welsh is a Director at Optimat, an independent strategy consultancy based in central Scotland. She has wide ranging and significant experience in developing a robust evidence base to support business planning, strategic and economic development and policy making. She is currently coordinating a collaborative innovation procurement project, EcoQUIP Plus, which seeks to demonstrate how pro-innovation procurement methods can improve the efficiency, quality and sustainability of healthcare and increase the take-up of innovative solutions through collaborative actions.
Jonathan Cylus
Jonathan Cylus is the head of the Observatory’s London Hubs based at both the London School of Economics, where he is a Senior Research Fellow, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he is an Honorary Research Fellow.
His main research is on health systems, focusing primarily on health financing policy, health economics and health system performance, as well as on the economics of population ageing. He has worked on these topics in a wide range of countries, as well as with the European Commission, OECD and WHO. Jon is also interested in the role of social policies and other social determinants on health. Prior to joining the Observatory, Jonathan was an economist at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the United States.
Jon has a BA in Economics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics.
Kanita Karaduzovic-Hadziabdic
Kanita Karaduzovic-Hadziabdic, received her MSc in Computer Science from Oxford University and her PhD in Computer Sciences and Engineering from International University of Sarajevo. Dr. Karaduzovic-Hadziabdic is the author of numerous indexed publications. Her research interests are primarily in the area of data science and application of artificial intelligence in several fields, with the focus in biomedicine. Currently Dr. Karaduzovic-Hadziabdic works as an assistant professor of Computer Sciences and Engineering at the International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Janneke Van der Kamp
Janneke Van der Kamp is Region Europe Head at Novartis Pharmaceuticals.
Jacque Mallender
Jacque is a respected international health and public policy economist. Over the last 35 years, she has directed many strategic engagements in healthcare, crime, justice, home affairs, education, employment and social welfare. She has worked in the UK health sector throughout her career; internationally she has directed projects and/or provided subject matter expertise to clients in Europe, North America, the Middle East and, more recently, the WHO EMRO Region.
Her experience includes: the economics of public health; service and care-pathway design across all diseases and population groups; healthcare systems including contracting and financing; and access to healthcare and disparities for vulnerable groups. Jacque’s special interests include Universal Health Coverage, the design of value-based healthcare systems, integrated health and social care, and the role of digital health technologies in accelerating improvement.
Jacque is on the Executive Committee of the Economic Research Council where she leads their Health Economics Programme. She is also an associate of the Oxford Centre for Triple Value Healthcare. Jacque was a founding convenor of the joint Campbell and Cochrane Economics Methods Group. Jacque regularly speaks at international events, chairs panels at national and international academic and industry conferences, and designs and delivers training in Health Economics.
John Dillon
Prof John Dillon is Professor of Hepatology and Gastroenterology and a principle investigator, in the Division of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Dundee, based at Ninewells hospital, Dundee. He is also an Honorary Consultant with NHS Tayside, leading a busy general hepatology service and a research group. He is Vice President for Hepatology of the British Society of Gastroenterology and was President of the Scottish Society of Gastroenterology. He graduated in medicine from St Georges Hospital Medical School, University of London, and subsequently gained his MD based on research performed in the University of Edinburgh while a lecturer in Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
His award winning research interests include; new pathways of care for patients with abnormal LFTs, for people infected with HCV, new therapies for HCV infection, as well as novel diagnostics and treatments for NAFLD. His research activities stretch from the bench to the bedside and out into the community. He has published over 200 peer reviewed original research papers. The impact of his research work includes the Tayside region of Scotland reaching WHO HCV elimination targets in 2020. He chairs the Scottish HCV Action Plan Clinical Leads Group, is a member of the Scottish Government’s Ministerial advisory board for Blood Borne viruses and sexual health. He previously led the development group of the UK consensus guidelines for HCV and has chaired the Hepatitis C SIGN guideline development group. He Chaired the SHAAP group that produced the recent “Alcohol-related liver disease: guidance for good practice” documents. He has delivered over 200 international lectures on liver disease
Lena Samuels
Born and educated in London, in addition to chairing South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust where she is also the well-being guardian, Lena also chairs the Hampshire and the IOW ICS, the South East Regional People Board, and the Council of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives.
Lena was previously a non-executive director with University Hospital Southampton and an associate non-executive director with IOW NHS Trust. She was a Lay Advisor with Wessex Deanery undertaking GP recruitment and the assessment of post-graduate doctors in rotation, as well as being a member of the school boards of surgery and emergency medicine.
Lena started her career as a lecturer in further and higher education and managed a training centre in London for young people at risk of exclusion. She currently runs a company which has provided communications and training in leadership and human rights on behalf of organisations such as the British High Commission, the National Crime Agency, CORAM, Bramshill Policing Advisers, UNICEF and UN Women.
Maria Carvalho
Maria da Graça Carvalho is currently a member of the European Parliament. She was a senior advisor of Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, from November 2014 to December 2015. Previously, she was a member of the European Parliament, between July 2009 and May 2014. In that capacity, she was one of the rapporteurs of Horizon 2020. She was also Principal Adviser to President Barroso in the fields of Science, Higher Education, Innovation, Research Policy, Energy, Environment and Climate Change from 2006 to 2009. She served as a Minister of Science and Higher Education of the XV Constitutional Government of Portugal and Minister of Science, Innovation and Higher Education of the XVI Constitutional Government. She is a Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon).
Maria Teresa Fabregas
Ms. Maria Teresa Fabregas is, since August 2020, one of the Directors in the Task Force RECOVER in the European Commission, in charge of the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Maria Teresa joined the European Commission in 1997. Since then she has worked in the Directorate-General for Enterprise, the Directorate-General for Trade, the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union where she became Head of Unit and the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union where she was appointed Director for Indirect Taxation and Tax Administration.
Mariano Votta
Mariano Votta, public affairs professional and journalist, is the Director of Active Citizenship Network (ACN), the international branch of the Italian NGO Cittadinanzattiva, where he is responsible for European Affairs.
Passionate about healthcare and consumer issues, he has more than 18 years of experience in the field of advocacy, stakeholder engagement, European projects, communication and civic information.
Mariano’s role is in Public Affairs and Project Management at EU level now, but he began his career working in journalism as Communication Officer at Cittadinanzattiva. In this position, he was involved for the first time at international level within the United Nation Development Programme, where he worked as consultant in Public Services and Communication in Colombia from 2010 to 2012.
Then, he moved on to take up his current position within ACN in 2013. Since then, he has been actively involved as ACN stepped up its advocacy activities at the European Institutions, which in 2015 led to the opening of a representative office in Brussels and – above all – to the launch of the MEP Interest Group “European Patients’ Rights & Cross-Border Healthcare”, promoted with the endorsement of almost 100 organizations across Europe. Furthermore, in 2016, Mariano won the Efhre International University Excellence Awards on patients’ rights.
Mariano Votta officially represents ACN abroad, with the European Commission DG Health, DG Consumers, DG Move, DG Migration and Home Affairs and with all the other stakeholders. He is also in the Board/Executive Committee of Cittadinanzattiva (since 2013), Pain Alliance Europe (since 2014), Societal Impact of Pain (since 2016) and Health First Europe (since 2017), Movimento Europeo (since 2019) and the international peer reviewed journal Advances in Health and Behavior (since 2019).
In 2016 he was appointed by the European Commission to represent Italian Consumer Associations in the European Consumer Consultative Group, and in 2017 he was appointed as Secretary General at European Consumer Union-ECU.
Before joining Cittadinanzattiva-ACN in 2001, he worked in the credit sector for a multinational corporation.
Mariano Votta holds a MSc in Political Science and two post-graduate courses in European Public Relations and in Corporate Social Responsibility.
He has also volunteered in the post communist Albania. He has been for more than ten years a Boy Scout where he became assistant leader of the youngest groups (7-12 years old).
Marta Soares
Marta Soares currently works as Clinical Director of Instituto Português de Oncologia. Marta is a Medical Oncologist and does research in Clinical Trials and Oncology. Marta was the Head of the Lung Clinic at IPOPORTO until 2019.
Matthias Wismar
Matthias is a Programme Manager at the Observatory based in Brussels.
His work focuses on health policy, politics and governance, the health workforce, European integration and intersectoral action and the Sustainable Development Goals. He is developing studies, policy briefs, rapid responses and face-to-face dissemination and knowledge brokering formats, including policy dialogues, evidence briefings and webinars.
Matthias holds a PhD in Political Science from Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
Michelle Falkenbach
Michelle Falkenbach is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Master of Public Health Program at Cornell University. Her research surrounds the impact of populist radical right parties on health policies. In addition, she is interested in comparative health policies and politics that lead to a more effective cross-fertilization between health and political science research.
Ruth Waitzberg
Ruth is a member of the Observatory’s Berlin hub and is based at the Technische Universitat Berlin. She is also a researcher scholar since 2010 at the Economics and Health Policy Team, at the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute. Her work focuses on health systems strengthening, payments to health providers and incentives, health insurance, policy evaluation, health and long-term care systems, cross-country comparisons, and COVID-19 related health policy.
Ruth has worked in collaboration with Israeli policymakers both brokering knowledge from the world to Israel and from Israel to the world. Ruth has won competitive grants for independent studies on healthcare policy and health economics. Ruth holds a BA in sociology, anthropology and political science and an MA in public policy, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is finalizing her joint PhD at the Technical University of Berlin and Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Sarah Rozenblum
Sarah Rozenblum is a French PhD Student in Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan. She is working on several research projects contrasting the American and European responses to COVID-19. She is also investigating health information technology (HiT) politics and medical devices regulation in Europe and in the US. She is especially interested in the use of public health agencies and expertise as well as the production of health norms in times of crisis.
Scott L. Greer
Scott L. Greer, Ph.D, a political scientist, is Professor of Health Management and Policy, Global Public Health, and Political Science (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan and is also Senior Expert Advisor on Health Governance for the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
He researches the politics of health policies, with a special focus on the politics and policies of the European Union and the impact of federalism on health care. Before coming to Michigan, he taught at University College London. He has published over fifty book chapters and articles in journals including the British Medical Journal, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Social Policy, and Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.
Simon Nadel
Dr Simon Nadel is a consultant and honorary reader in paediatric intensive care at St Mary’s Hospital and Imperial College London. He became a consultant in 1994, having completed hsi training in paediatric infectious disease at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and paediatric intensive care training at Great Ormond Street and St Mary’s.
Dr Nadel holds a major clinical and research interest into life-threatening infection in children, and has been involved in many studies examining the susceptibility, treatment and outcome of infections such as meningitis and septicaemia.
Stephen McCulloch
Stephen McCulloch joined Good Governance Institute (GGI) in July 2020 and is GGI’s Communications Director. Prior to joining GGI he led a diverse range of regulatory and health engagement and communications teams for over a decade.
Most recently his work with Ofwat, the water regulator, included leading the corporate communications team to develop national stakeholder engagement and influence campaigns alongside media and events. He led the stakeholder relationship programme for the development of a pivotal new strategy for the sector, which included working with water companies to better integrate with their communities and cross-sector local organisations to become true anchor organisations. For this programme of work Stephen developed and delivered a central digital hub for citizens and water companies to share their stories and learning with others.
He has also led communications teams for major London acute, mental health and specialist hospitals as well as leading CCG campaigns for community engagement across south London. This has included managing and designing community networks to encourage collaborative working both face-to-face and on digital platforms. He also led the rebrand of three major acute hospitals during a merge across several diverse north London boroughs.
Stephen has also led multi-disciplinary teams to integrate health messages across a complex and diverse range of audiences. Developing and delivery a series of face-to-face and digital events for a complex network of NHS anchor institutions and clinical commissioning groups, which saw an increase in the understanding of health messages across south London.
Venkata Satagopam
Venkata Satagopam is a Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Head of Bioinformatics core facility, LCSB, University of Luxembourg; Technical Coordinator (TeC) of ELIXIR-Luxembourg Node and CTO & Co-founder ITTM S.A. Luxembourg. Before joining LCSB, between 2004-2012 he worked as a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at the EMBL, Heidelberg. Before EMBL he worked as a Bioinformatics Scientist at LION bioscience AG, Heidelberg. He is having ~20 years of working experience in various bioinformatics fields including Data Integration and Knowledge Management; Clinical and Translational Data Curation, Harmonisation, Integration and Analysis; Dynamic Visual Analytics; Text-mining; Deep learning and advanced machine learning technologies and has published over 40 publications. He is an associate editor of Frontiers in Systems Biology, co-chair of ISCB Education Committee involved in the organisation of several conferences, workshops, code/data hackathons.
Vincent Mooser
Since August 1st, 2019, Vincent Mooser MD is the holder of the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Genomic Medicine at McGill University in Montreal. His Chair is entitled : “From Genes to Next Generation Thepapies”.
Vincent Mooser combines a unique blend of broad academic and industry experience covering
internal medicine, laboratory medicine, pharmaceutical sciences and genomic / precision medicine. He is board certified in internal medicine. After an extensive training in clinical pharmacology (Lausanne), experimental pharmacology (University of Melbourne) and molecular genetics of lipid disorders (UT Southwestern, Dallas TX), he was granted a six-year research professorship award from the Swiss National Science Foundation to study the effect of environmental and genetic contributors to lipid disorders and coronary artery disease.
In 2002, Vincent Mooser joined GSK R&D in Philadelphia to lead the effort in genetics of cardiovascular diseases. In this position, he co-designed and co-run with Prof Gérard Waeber the CoLaus (Cohorte Lausannoise) population-based cohort. He subsequently run roles of increasing responsibility (vice-president in charge of applied genetics and head of genetics for rare diseases) in GSK before returning to academia in Lausanne in 2011.
In CHUV Lausanne, he chaired for 6 years the Laboratory Department, which is the umbrella organization for the diagnostic labs in this University Hospital, with 600 collaborators. He was also elected for 3 years Vice-Dean for Clinical Research at Lausanne University Faculty of Biology and Medicine. In these capacities, he designed, obtained funding and implemented the foundation for genomic medicine at CHUV/UNIL, with the creation of the Lausanne Institutional Biobank. He subsequently focused his activities on clinical chemistry and biomarker development as a complement to genomic medicine.
Before joining McGill, Vincent Mooser was a Board member of the Swiss Academy for Medical Sciences, a member of the Analysis Group at the Federal Office of Public Health, a member of the Executive Committee of the Swiss Personalized Network, and the chairman of the Board for the Swiss Biobanking Platform. Vincent Mooser has recently been named as Adjunct Professor at the University of Bern. He contributed to 200+ peer-reviewed publications.
Yvan Devaux
Dr Yvan Devaux is head of the Cardiovascular Research Unit at Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH).
Using a thoroughly validated experimental pipeline including both discovery and validation phases, Yvan and his group aim to identify novel biomarkers of acute cardiac conditions such as acute myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, heart failure, aortic stenosis and stroke. His research group focuses on RNAs and particularly non-coding RNAs such as microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs.
He founded and coordinates the Cardiolinc network, a consortium of 7 private partners and more than 49 research groups worldwide investigating the role of long non-coding RNAs in cardiac disease.
Abstract Presenters
Alexander Micallef
Alexander Micallef has worked in Mater Dei Hospitalin Malta for the past 16 years, 9 years as a staff nurse and 7 years as a charge nurse. He has a Bachelor degree un Nursing, a Masters degree in Health Services Management and a Masters degree in Executive Business Administration. He his currently reading for a PhD in Health Services Management.
Ana Gama
Ana Gama is a researcher at NOVA National School of Public Health, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (ENSP-UNL). She has a PhD in International Health and a Master Degree in Community Psychology. She has been working as researcher in several national and international projects combining quantitative and qualitative methods, community-based participatory research and implementation research approaches to investigate health of vulnerable populations, such as migrant groups. Her main fields of research have been public health, health promotion and disease prevention, access and use of health services for prevention, diagnosis and care. She has published over 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored book chapters and books.
Anam Ahmed
Anam Ahmed has a background in the medical sciences with a strong interest in creating and facilitating bridges between health sciences and the practical field. She works as a research consultant at Panaxea and is specialized in health services research. Panaxea is a consultancy organisation in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) that supports informed decision-making concerning healthcare innovations. Anam is also doing her PhD-research at the department of Primary and Community Care at Radboudumc (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). Her PhD is based on two projects commissioned by the National Health Care Institute and focuses on the effectiveness of integrated, person-centred care for vulnerable groups. In order to investigate this complex healthcare intervention she uses realist research, a theory-driven approach to find an answer on what works, for whom, why, and in what circumstances.
Andrea Brambilla
Dr. Andrea Brambilla is an architect who holds a PhD in Architecture Built environment Construction engineering (DABC) at Politecnico di Milano. He is active in the Design & Health Lab with researches about evidence-based tools for health systems quality assessment and improvement. He is also Visiting PhD at Chalmers University of Technology, Center for Healthcare Architecture with IDEA League grant. Dr. Brambilla is author of several publication in scientific journals, speaker in international conferences and lecturer in under and post-graduate classes about the relationship between Built Environment and Health Systems, Sustainable Hospital Design and Urban Public Health.
Andrea Schweiger
Andrea Schweiger is a Scientific Researcher at the Karl Landsteiner Institute for Hospital Organisation in Vienna and a doctoral student in Advanced Business Administration at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria). Additionally, she studied psychology at the University of Klagenfurt and is a clinical and health psychologist.
Since 2015 she is working on several projects in health economics to improve structures, processes, and outcomes of health organisations, e. g. cultural changes and quality improvement, patient safety and multidisciplinary teamwork. Currently, she focuses on health services research in cancer care to analyse the role and impact of multidisciplinary tumour boards at the Medical University of Vienna, enhancing patient outcomes and considering patient perspectives in clinical decision making.
Anne Girault
As a health services researcher, Anne desires to study the current evolutions in health care delivery and services, using mostly qualitative methods. She has 8 years experience in health systems research, currently working as senior researcher and associate professor at the French School of Public Health.
Her research has been focused on the implementation of payment reforms for healthcare organizations (hospital, rehabilitation services, telehealth platforms) and has been engaged in various evaluation programs on care coordination programs, new quality indicators, etc.
She holds a MSc in Management at EM Lyon, a Master of Public Health from the French School of Public Health and a PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Paris Sorbonne. Originally from France, she has studied, lived and worked in the UK, US and Spain
Anna Wohlthat
Anneli Hujala
Anneli Hujala works as a senior researcher at the Department of Health and Social Management in the University of Eastern Finland. Her research focuses on integrated care and cross-boundary collaboration in the context of people with multiple complex problems.
Annika Bengts
Annika Bengts is a Doctoral Candidate from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management from Aalto University, Finland. She focuses her research on multi-provider environments and business ecosystems in healthcare.
Anu Vehkamäki
Anu Vehkamäki is graduating as an M.Sc. from Aalto University. She has explored the academic world as a research assistant for several years in various faculties and received multiple stipends for her study efforts. She has also gained international study experience at the National University of Singapore. Anu has focused her studies on researching knowledge and business networks. This gained expertise she is now applying to the healthcare environment.
Bart Noort
Bart Noort graduated at the University of Groningen in Life, Science and Technology, with Biomedical Science as major and a minor on Public Administration. In 2014 he started his PhD at the University of Groningen on healthcare purchasing, for which he visited England and Sweden for a health system comparative case study. He was furthermore extensively involved in setting-up and evaluating the COPD coaching project together with a health insurer, four hospitals and several other involved parties and professionals. Bart visited the IPSERA, EurOMA, EHMA, POMS and Gastein Forum conferences where he presented his work. In 2019 he received the Karolinska Best PhD Thesis Award at the EHMA conference in Helsinki, based on an early draft of his thesis.
On 17 September 2020 Bart defended his dissertation, titled ‘The healthcare purchaser as a care chain orchestrator’. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher on logistics of medical mobility devices.
Bianca Duran
Bianca Duran (MA) is a Research Technician within the Department of Public Health, Babes-Bolyai University, working on healthcare management, health workforce, policy implementation and health promotion. Her current focus lies on strengthening the mother and the child healthcare system in Romania.
Ms. Duran has completed her education in public and healthcare management with a bachelor’s degree in Public Health Services and Policies and currently, she is pursuing a master’s degree in Healthcare Management at James Lind Institute in Geneva and at Uninettuno International Telematic University of Rome. She is a former speaker of the International Network for Health Workforce and Education 2021 conference, formerly held in Dublin. Currently, Ms. Duran is working within the Center for Health Workforce and Policy.
Birgit Sandu
Birgit Sandu is the European Projects Manager at the Assembly of European Regions, and holds a MSc in European Public Policy from UCL. She works with regional authorities across Europe to improve and innovative the design and implementation of policies through capacity-building actions and transfer of knowledge. She has been working with healthcare authorities from 9 European Regions in the context of the SCIROCCO Exchange project supporting them in the adoption and scaling-up of integrated care through the development and implementation of personalised knowledge transfer programmes.
Bronagh McGuckin
Bronagh McGuckin is a Dental Core Trainee (DCT) working in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Altnagelvin Hospital, Derry. She graduated with a Bachelor of Dental Surgery with Honours from Queen’s University Belfast, secured Membership to the Faculty of Dental Surgery (MFDS) from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow and was awarded a PgCert in Medical Education from Newcastle University. Whilst working as a General Professional Trainee (GPT) at Newcastle Dental Hospital, she was involved in a research project applying health economic principles to the provision of NHS Dental Services in England.
Chiara Morlotti
Clarissa Terenzi Seixas
Doctor of Social Sciences at Paris Descartes, professor in the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Nursing Sciences of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Clarissa is currently a researcher at EHESP. Expert in the field of sociology of health and qualitative research methods, she has conducted researches in health management, in particular in the territorial organization of care pathways.
Cordula Wagner
Cordula Wagner (PhD, physiotherapist, sociologist) is Executive Director of the Netherlands Institute of Health Services Research (Nivel) in Utrecht and works as a professor of patient safety at VU University / Amsterdam University Medical Center in Amsterdam. She is also head of the research center ‘Safety 4 Patients’, a collaboration of Amsterdam Public Health research institute (APH) and Nivel.
For the last 20 years Cordula has been involved in a substantial number of projects focussing on a) the implementation of quality systems among healthcare institutions and professionals, b) the evaluation of national quality programs and more specific quality improvement activities such as guidelines, team-training and break through projects, c) the relation between quality systems, care process and clinical outcomes, and d) risk management and patient safety. The research takes place in various health care fields, e.g. hospitals, nursing homes, primary care and mental health care organisations. She has also participated in a number of European projects focussing on quality and patient safety.
Cristina Mendes Santos
Cristina Mendes Santos, MSc, female, is a PhD student in Dynamics of Health and Welfare at Linköping University and Nova University Lisbon and a researcher at Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS. Her current research focuses on self-care programs in oncology, more specifically, on internet-delivered interventions aiming at improving psychosocial outcomes in cancer survivors. She has a background in Clinical Psychology and holds a master’s degree in Clinical and Health Psychology from University of Porto. Her master focused on the assessment of health-related quality of life in colorectal cancer patients. She has a strong track record in coordinating oncology clinical trials at IPO-Porto and is a member of the Portuguese Psychologists Association working group on Psychology and eHealth.
Damian Greaves
Professor Damian Eisenghower Greaves currently lectures in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, St. George’s University.
His educational and professional qualifications include a PH.D in Health Services Management & Policy, two Master of Science Degrees – one in Public Health and one in Social Sciences, and a Bachelor’s in History & Sociology with Education (with Hons.).
Professor Greaves was a former Parliamentarian and Minister of Government of Saint Lucia between 1997-2009, having served as Minister for Community Development, Culture, Local Government, Cooperatives and Ecclesiastical Affairs from 1997-2001, and Minister for Health, Human Services, Family Affairs and Gender relations from 2001-2006.
He is currently a board member of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition (HCC), Chair of the Grenada National Chronic Non-Communicable Disease Commission, and member of the Advisory Committee on National Health Insurance in Grenada.
Professor Greaves served as a member of the Grenada Cabinet appointed Preparatory Committee to consider the establishment of The Grenada National Reparations Commission. He now serves as Advisor to this Commission.
He is the author of several publications on health and related areas in international journals.
Daniele Bellavia
Daniele Bellavia is a research collaborator in the Center for Health Economics, Social and Health Care Management at LIUC Business School since January 2020, after having obtained his master’s degree in Management Engineering at LIUC – Cattaneo University in December 2019.
During the degree course, he first deepened the issues related to business organization and later took the specialization in Health Care System Management, where he acquired skills on the management of companies in the health sector.
His research interests include management issues in the healthcare context (with the application of techniques such as Activity-based Costing, Business Process Improvement as well as Health Technology Assessment) with a particular focus on organizational and economic impact.
Dorine J. van Staalduinen
Dorine is a PhD candidate at both the Leiden University Medical Center and the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of the Leiden University. The focus of her doctoral research is on the implementation of Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC). Her background in Health Policy Management made her especially interested in approaching healthcare from a management perspective. In her PhD trajectory she therefore combines a healthcare perspective with a governance (or management) perspective to study VBHC. She is mainly interested in the organizational- and team factors that influence the intended interprofessional collaboration in VBHC-teams. Furthermore, she investigates if and how change management perspectives could provide insights in evaluating the implementation of VBHC.
With her research she wants to increase knowledge regarding how VBHC should implemented in addition to what should be implemented and why.
Estelle Baurès
Dr. Estelle Baurès (PhD, HDR) is Sustainability and Social Responsibility Officer in EHESP School of public health. She has a PhD in environmental health and works on the resilience of the health system to environmental change. She coordinates the “ChanCES – climate change, transitions and health” skills set, implemented for the training of all the School’s learners. Previously, project manager at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, she became aware of Sustainable Development and Social Responsibility and then trained at the Collège des hautes études en développement durable in Britany, France. She is a member of the board of directors of the Collectif pour l’intégration du développement durable et de la responsabilité sociétale dans l’enseignement supérieur (CIRSES).
Ester Cardinaal
Ester Cardinaal studied private law and criminal law at Utrecht University. Initially, she held mainly legal commercial positions. After that she held various managerial positions. Amongst which head of legal affairs of a Dutch health insurance company.
Since 2011 she has been working at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
First as manager of the Dutch Knowledge Center for Chronic Fatigue, later as managing director of the Department of Rehabilitation and since 2019 as managing director for the departments Operating Rooms and Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine.
Given her fascination with the managerial aspects of an academic medical center, she decided to pursue a PhD on this topic in 2018. In doing so, she aims to provide insight into and contribute to the improvement of healthcare organization.
Eva Turk
As a health systems researcher, Eva desires to find and implement safe and sustainable healthcare delivery models globally through co-creation and smart technologies and digital solutions.
She has 15 years experience in health systems reseach, currently working as senior reseacher in Gravitate Health project led by Univesity of Oslo. She is also an associate professor working on task shifting, digital health, ethics in AI and digital health literacy at the University of South- East Norway. Her research has been focused on person centred care, digital health, patient safety, health technology assessment and quality of life. She teaches Public Health at the Medical Faculty, University in Maribor and is Public Health delegate – Emergency Response Unit with the Norwegian Red Cross.
Eva serves as a Board member of Polytekniske Forening- Helse, Women in Global Health Norway and is a member of the Expert Council at the Slovenian Digital Health Innovation Lab.
She holds an MBA in Healthcare Management and a PhD in Health Sciences. Originally from Slovenia, she has studied, lived and worked in Austria, Japan, Finland, Spain, Argentina, Syria and Norway.
She believes that knowledge transfer, capacity building, motivation and empowerment through eduction represent a cornerstone for improving the society, therefore, she founded SanAstra Foundation, dedicated to improve digital health literacy.
Apart from the healthcare expertise, Eva is passionate about the sustainable development and the SDG’s, in particular SDG 5, Gender Equality. As the President of Professional Women’s Network Norway, she is contributing to raising awareness about gender balanced leadership and opportunities for empowering female professionals.
Fabrizio Ruffini
Fabrizio Ruffini is a statistician, he studied at University La Sapienza in Rome where he obtained a degree in Statistics Sciences. He works for the Hospital of Perugia, since 2005, where he is currently head of management control from 2016. For the last 16 years, Fabrizio has been involved in a substantial number of projects, in particular he set up and implemented corporate budgeting process, he developed reporting model, he has done health analyzes, he studied corporate lean organization in surgery rooms, he partecipated at standard costs study in healthcare and lastly he’s monitoring performance measures of the Hospital of Perugia constatly. Since 2017 he developed a dashboard system for top management and middle management for data analysis through business intelligence and data visualization tools. Currently Fabrizio is developing a system for the monitoring of each hospitalization in the hospital, also he is elaborating on a model for the health forecasts in the Hospital of Perugia.
Francesca Donofrio
Francesca Donofrio is Phd student in Business Administration at the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy). She has a degree in Economics and Finance and a Master’s degree in Global marketing, communication and made in Italy. Her research interests are in the areas of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, integrated reporting and non-financial information, gender medicine, smart technologies and artificial intelligence. She is ad hoc reviewer for Corporate Governance Emerald.
Grazia Dicuonzo
Grazia Dicuonzo is Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy), where she teaches Financial Accounting, Financial Statement Analysis and IAS/IFRS. She has a Ph.D. in Business Administration and she is eligible to Full Professor of Business Administration with (Italian) National Scientific Qualification. She is a Member of Editorial Board of “International Journal of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism” Journal. She is a member of the EFRAG Secretariat for the Project Task Force on European sustainability reporting standards (PTF-ESRS). Her research interests are in the areas of Integrated Reporting and Non-Financial Information, Clinical risk management, Smart technologies and Financial Accounting. She is ad-hoc reviewer for some journal, such as Management Decision and Corporate Social Responsibility & Environmental Management.
Isabel Farina
Isabel Farina is currently PhD candidate at Politecnico of Milan, with an interdisciplinary programme between Management Engineering and Design. Her research focuses on Social Prescribing as a community-asset based model of care, with a special attention on children and youth wellbeing. Her background in medical anthropology, combined with her past work experience in Service Design, made her PhD trajectory interested in approaching Social Prescribing with a multidisciplinary eye, looking for participatory methods and transferability of the model from UK to Italy.
Iseult Browne
Dr. Iseult Browne graduated from Trinity College Dublin Medical School in 2015. Her interest in Oncology was piqued while on a summer elective in The Christie Hospital UK. She was accepted onto the highly prestigious Royal College of Physicians Ireland medical oncology training scheme in 2019, which she is in her final year of at present. Her specialities of interest are breast cancer, gynae-oncology, and onco-genetics, and she has just completed a postgraduate diploma in Cancer Genetics. She has a passion for research and has presented at a number of national and international conferences to date.
She has a particular interest in health economics which she hopes to intricately link into her future work and indeed decision making.
Iseult is currently doing an MSc in Diagnostics and Precision Medicine. This is to enable her to both understand and better utilise the proactive early identification and highly targeted tools that are now becoming available.
She is keen to ensure that she combines absolute patient centricity with continuously understanding how newly evolving technology and methods can lead to vastly improved patient outcomes.
Ivo Dumic-Cule
Graduated from Zagreb School of Medicine in 2012, received PhD in 2016 and MHA in 2021. For his projects received Dean’s and Rector’s Award. Youngest winner of New Investigator Award, given by European Calcified Tissue Society. He received Dean’s Award for highest scientific productivity in his PhD class. Author or co-author of more than 20 articles published in CC, international patent and 4 book chapters cited more than 650 times.
He was responsible for several research projects at School of Medicine, University of Zagreb and postdoctoral fellow at International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Trieste. He was Chief Executive Officer at second largest Children`s Hospital in Croatia. Currently is Assistant Professor at University North and senior scientist at Laboratory for Mineralized Tissues.
Katerina Tarasova
As the Director General of Health Assessment Europe (HAE) and Executive Director of International Accreditation at Accreditation Canada (AC), Katerina Tarasova pairs innovation and performance excellence to drive global cooperation.
With 17 years of experience in international development, strategic planning and health systems strengthening, Katerina has a proven track record for building lasting partnerships – which have helped advance quality and patient safety in more than 35 countries.
Drawing from direct experience in business and humanitarian settings in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia, she has informed the development and promotion of people-centred programs and services, contributing to HAE’s and AC’s growing reach and impact.
In recent years, she was responsible for conceptualizing national-level projects supporting healthcare assessment and policy implementation. She has also collaborated with European Commission, PAHO, World Bank and others to mobilize international projects focused on healthcare, education, and socio-economic development.
Katerina is a member of the Board for the Canada-Arab Business Council as well as a Committee Member for the International Advisory Committee of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Canada. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs and a Diploma in European Integration from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Kendra Pyne
Kendra is currently a PhD Candidate at University College London. Her research focuses on global medicine and health policy. Having grown up in America, Kendra has a particular interest in cultural influences on health policy decision-making. She hopes to refine the existing resource allocation process in the US to create more affordable and accessible healthcare for US citizens. In doing so, she is examining other countries policies and cultural influence on resource allocation practices.
Kinga Zdunek
Dr Kinga Zdunek is a senior researcher and teacher at Medical University of Lublin in Public Health Department. Her research focuses on social and health issues, with a particular interest in health policy and international health.
Dr Zdunek’s recent research, which was performed within MOCHA (Horizon 2020) project, was devoted to the analysis of contextual determinants of child health policy at European level. Additionally, she was involved in the assessment of the impact of evidence based solutions on the implementation of innovative models of child health care in Europe. Her research interests reflect her professional background and education as Master of Sociology and PhD in Health Sciences.
Jacopo Fagherazzi
Dr Jacopo Fagherazzi MD, has been a resident in Public Health and Preventive Medicine in the Health Direction of the University Hospital of Verona, Italy, since 2019, dealing mainly with patient’s surgical pathway and, since February 2020, being employed in the management of the COVID19 emergency and in the application of health surveillance protocols to hospital personnel.
Jacopo Frassini
Flight surgeon of the Italian Air Force holding a Private Pilot License, specialized in cardiology at Padua University and currently assigned to the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine for multinational medical interoperability. As a medical officer, he previously served as a base physician at the Aerospace Operations Command in Poggio Renatico AFB (Ferrara, ITA) and supported operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Kuwait, Lebanon and Iraq, deploying with both regular and special forces. He also participated in numerous national, international and allied exercises where both legacy and innovative healthcare support concepts have been executed or tested.
Joana Faro
Joana Faro is hospital management consultant dedicated to the implementation and development of an information system for clinical services and adequate support to the Decentralized Forecast Management model. Responsible for collecting, processing and disseminating information to analyze the effectiveness of hospital activities and their productivity.
Joana Seringa
Joana Seringa is a PhD student at National School of Public Health, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal. Holds a master’s degree in health management, and is graduated in nursing, with a postgraduate degree in management control and corporate finance.
Presently, is the manager of the operating rooms at Centro Hospitalar Universitário de Lisboa Central.
Her current research focuses on Patient Reported Experiences and Outcome Measures.
Her main scientific areas of interest concern global and digital health; value based healthcare; and financing and organizational models.
João André Santos
João André Santos, is currently Chief Audit Executive in a Public Portuguese Hospital, he is graduated in Economics at Universidade de Coimbra and holds a specialization in Hospital Administration at Nova – National School of Public Health, Public Health Research Center, Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
João Victor Rocha
João Victor Rocha is a researcher at National School of Public Health in Portugal, and a last year-PhD Candidate at NOVA University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Linköping University (Sweden). His PhD research focused on the use of Hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions to assess and compare access, quality and performance of primary health care between countries. As a researcher his current work focuses on various fields, including COVID-19 (governmental responses and impacts in health care delivery services); Long COVID (analysis of risk factors); and Patient Reported Experiences and Outcome Measures (as an indicator of quality of Primary Health Care). His background is Actuarial Sciences and Administration (with focus on human resources), with both the Bachelor and Master obtained in Brazil. For six years he worked on projects financed by the Ministry of Health of Brazil to assess health situation and public health policies there, before moving to Europe to pursue his PhD.
Jon Txarramendieta
Jon Txarramendieta holds an Engineering in Industrial Organization at the University of Deusto (2010) and a Master degree in Health Management at Deusto Business School (2015). In 2017, he obtained the Expert Course in Health Services and Chronic Diseases Research. He has experience in the implementation of health services in national and European project context. Since 2016 he works as Project Manager at Kronikgune, where he has been involved in several EUfunded projects including Mastermind, ACT@Scale, SCIROCCO, SCIROCCO Exchange and the JA CHRODIS Plus. Currently is the Project Manager at the Coordination team of the Joint Action JADECARE.
Justin Aunger
Dr. Justin Aunger is a Research Fellow in the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham. He is an early career researcher working on a realist synthesis and evaluation of partnering as a strategy for improvement in NHS providers. He recently completed his PhD at the School of Sport, Exercise, and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Birmingham and is an expert in applied behavioural psychology at individual and organisational levels.
Lucrezia Bianca Ferrario
Lucrezia Bianca Ferrario is a research collaborator in the Centre for Health Economics, Social and Health Care Management – LIUC Business School, and she is one of the Coordinator of the Healthcare Datascience Lab – Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC University, providing the economic vision for the application of economic and financial tools useful in the definition of the correct cost of healthcare technologies.
She is currently a lecturer in the School of Engineering at Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC University (Castellanza, Varese, Italy), for the course titled “Technology Assessment and Datascience in Healthcare”. She also teaches in Masters in Healthcare Management Course and in the Health Technology Assessment training course at Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC University, with a specific focus of all the aspects related to the definition of the organizational and financial impacts related to healthcare innovations in the clinical practice.
Her main scientific areas of interests concern all the methods and tools related to the evaluation of healthcare technologies, health economics, HTA, Multi Criteria Decision Analysis – MCDA, and the application of the methodology of benchmarking and Activity Based Costing within the healthcare sector, with more than 20 papers published and with several attendances at National and International Conferences on these topics.
Lukas Kerschbaumer
Lukas Kerschbaumer is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. His background is in Educational Science and Social and Political Theory He was working at the Institute for Employment Research Nuremberg (IAB) (the research institute of the Federal Employment Agency Germany) as researcher at the Panel Study “Labor Market and Social Security” and at the department “Joblessness and Social Inclusion”. Currently he is finishing his PhD on labor market inclusion of long-term unemployed against the odds. He works now at the Center for Social & Health Innovation in Innsbruck (Tyrol/Austria) and is involved in poverty research, qualitative methods and network research as well as the topic of (Labor market)Integration and (social)participation of disadvantaged groups depending on social benefits during the pandemic. Furthermore, his interest lies in social contexts and their influence on health and health competencies as in community based approaches in handling the pandemic.
Mandar Dabhilkar
Mandar Dabhilkar is Associate Professor of Operations Management at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University.
Maria de Guadalupe Comparada Almeida
Maria de Guadalupe Comparada Almeida is full Professor in the Department of Health, Occupational Therapy, Polytechnic Institute of Beja Portugal.
Maria Maia
Maria Maia holds a Ph.D. in Technology Assessment (TA) from the Univ. Nova de Lisboa (FCT-UNL), in Portugal and a Master in Administration and Management of Health Services from Universidade de Évora (UE) and Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa (ESTeSL), in Portugal. With a background in health sciences (Radiology), since 2013 she is a researcher in the field of TA at the Institute of Technology and Systems Analysis (ITAS) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), were she is member of the Research group “Life, Innovation, Health, and Technology“. At the present, Maria is leading ITAS work in two projects related to AI applied in health and collaborating in several other projects as well. She is an elected member of the board of the Society for the Study of New and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) (since 2018), an editorial board member of the Journal of Responsible Technology (Elsevier), and a founder member of the Observatory of Technology Assessment (OAT) of CICS.NOVA Portugal (2015), where she is also an associated research member.
Among her main fields of interest and research are citizen and stakeholders’ perspectives on new technologies, concepts and practices of Technology Assessment (TA), scientific developments and practices of responsible innovation (RI) ,TA in health, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare settings, decision-making process , values and ethical principles and guidelines for innovation and R&D, Radiology and mixed-methods research.
Maria Picco
Maria Picco is a Master student in Management Engineering at Politecnico of Milan (Italy), with a specialization in Sustainable Operations Management and Social Innovation. She is running a master thesis regarding the evolution of health professionals’ role in the home care setting. During her studies, she was involved in a project work that aimed at understanding the current care pathways of Heart Failure and identifying the most promising organizational and technological innovations for the management of HF patients.
Marija Jevtic
Marija Jevtic is full professor at University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, specialist in Hygiene (Public Health) at the Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina with subspecialisation in medical ecology; research collaborator at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Research Centre on Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health; associate member of the Academy of Medical Sciences Serbian Medical Society; group analytic therapist and System Psychodynamic Organizational Consultant; EU Climate Pact Ambassador.
She has 25 years experience in the research and education process and advocacy in public health and environment and health. Field of interest and work: public health, environment and health, SDGa, climate change, disaster andhealth, migration, mental health, school health, food safety, nutrition, health management, reproductive and sexual health, group psychotherapy, organizational consulting. As a university professor she have been involved in different curricula development in Faculty of Medicine University of Novi Sad in the field of Public Health, Nursing, Disaster medicine, Nutrition, Medical ecology, Hygiene. She is also professor at Faculty of Technical Sciences University of Novi Sad (undergraduate and postgraduate studies) in the field of disaster and vulnerability, public health and emergencies, mental health and psychosocial support in emergencies).
She has been Director of Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina; Head of the Department of Hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad; Assistant minister Ministry of Health RS.
Mieke Rijken
Mieke Rijken is a Senior Researcher at Nivel (Netherlands institute for health services research) and part-time Professor Health and Social Services at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research focuses on the needs for care and support of people with (multiple) chronic conditions, older citizens and cancer survivors, and the development and implementation of person-centred integrated care models to meet their needs.
Milena Vasic
Milena Vasic is Professor of Public Health at the Institute of Public Health of Serbia.
Milica Paut Kusturica
Milica Paut Kusturica is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine and specialist of pharmacoeconomics and pharmaceutical legislation. As a strong research professional with a PhD in Clinical Medicine she is mostly focused on pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics, public health and social pharmacy. She has published more than 20 papers in highly impacted international journals and has presented at various international conferences including International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), European Drug Utilization Research Group (EuroDURG) and The European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT).
Miranda Rute
Graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1997 and Specialist in Hospital Pharmacy in 2001, she has been working in Hospital Pharmacy at Barreiro Montijo Hospital Center since 1997. Member of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Commission since 1997 and the Infection Control Commission, current GCL-PPCIRA since 1998. In this context, was co-responsible between 2015 and 2018 of the Coordination of the Stop Infection Project in CHBM under the responsibility of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Institute for Health Improvement. Fun Accumulations of Coordination of the Working Group on Wound Treatment of CHBM, E.P.E. and Member of the Working Group on Artificial Nutrition. Appointed Medication Manager since 2012.
She has been invited professor at Portuguese Red Cross College of Nursing (ESECVP) in the discipline of Pharmacology since 2019.
Niki Medendorp
Niki Medendorp is Account manager at Netherlands Heart Registration.
Nour Alrabie
Nour Alrabie (Pharm.D., Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor of Strategy, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at IDRAC Business School (France). She is also an affiliate researcher at VU Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Queen’s University Belfast (UK). Her research deals with the emergence of collective actions and digital innovation, mainly in the setting of healthcare. She presented her work in the most prestigious conferences in her fields: European Academy of Management, European Group for Organizational Studies, European Marketing Academy, and European Health Management Association. She was invited by several institutions around the world: Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa (Italy), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), University of Oulu (Finland), and Universidad de la Salle (Colombia). Her latest publication, which was published in Health Service Management Research, investigates the emergence of collective actions among healthcare practitioners, in French rural areas.
Oskar Roemeling
Oskar Roemeling is Assistant Professor of Innovation Management & Strategy and Fellow of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health.
Patrícia Alves Rocha
Patrícia Alves Rocha holds a master’s degree in Health Evidence and Decision and is graduated in economics.
Presently, she is the manager of the intensive care and emergency Unit at Centro Hospitalar São Joao, one of the biggest hospitals in Portugal.
Her current research focuses on the study of the health services in the productive, organizational and distributive aspects and the impact of patients’ health status, namely the assessment of quality of the services provided, , access to health care and economical aspect of equity in care-giving and distribution of resources.
Paula Madaleno
Paula Madaleno is a medical master in occupational health and with an MBA in health system management. Madaleno is also doing her Ph.D. in International Health Policies at NOVA University of Lisbon. She has been working in Angola for more than 20 years, focusing on the health system strengthening, health workforce, policy implementation, and health promotion, with the Ministry of Health, National Institute of Public Health, USAID, PMI, World Bank, and Global Fund. She is an editorial board member of the Risco Zero Magazine (1st journal on occupational health in Angola) and a member of the Occupational Health Research group of the European Association of Public Health (EUPHA). Her current focus is on strengthening effective public policies to protect workers’ health. The main fields of interest and research are occupational health literacy, professional risk perception, professional risk management, health workforce, health promotion, and occupational disease prevention.
Paulien Vermunt
Paulien Vermunt is a senior researcher at Vilans, the national Centre of Expertise for long-term care in the Netherlands. In 2012, she obtained a PhD in the field of type 2 diabetes prevention in Dutch primary care. Afterwarts, she started working as a consultant guiding the implementation of person-centred care in the nursing home sector. Her current work focuses on improving the quality of elderly care in the Netherlands. In the past two years, Paulien was project leader of the evaluation of ‘Dignity and pride’, a governmental support program for quality improvement in Dutch nursing homes.
Petra Kokko
Mrs. Petra Kokko is a Development Manager at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare and a doctoral student in local public economics in Tampere University. Her thesis addresses the paradigm shift towards value-based healthcare, and it’s impacts on the health system at micro, meso and macro levels and hybrid governance in the context of healthcare. Petra has a comprehensive background in the health care sector; first as a nurse in operating rooms and after completing the master’s degree in Business Administration (in 2003, University of Vaasa), as an accounting and finance expert in hospitals and other social and health care organizations.
Raquel Chantre
Raquel Chantre is a Hospital Manager at Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Central (CHULC), with current responsibilities over the Pharmacy Department. She has a postgraduate degree in Hospital Administration from UNL/ENSP and over 8 years of experience in the Health sector, having worked in various roles in both public and private sectors. Her focus action points include centralizing drug procurement processes, improving data management analyses, developing a paper free culture and implementing outpatient pharmacy proximity programs.
Riikka Riihimies
Riikka Riihimies is a general practitioner, clinical instructor of general medicine, and PhD student in Tampere University, Finland. Her PhD research focuses on validation of Navigator, which is a digital service for recognizing different groups of patients with similar needs in health care. She is interested in developing patient—centered care and digital health services.
Robin Peeters
Robin Peeters is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Health Services Research, Maastricht University. She has a background in Medicine and Healthcare Policy, Innovation, and Management. Already during her Medical education, she developed a particular interest in organizing health care more efficiently and effectively. Her current PhD research, therefore, focuses on inter-organizational networks in which different types of stakeholders from various sectors collaborate to achieve specific goals such as decreasing costs or increasing the quality of health care in their region. She is particularly interested in the effectiveness of this type of network: how to conceptualize and operationalize the term ‘network effectiveness’ and how these networks can contribute to the major challenges that health systems face.
Roisin O’Donovan
Dr Róisín O’Donovan has recently completed a PhD examining psychological safety in healthcare teams. She has been working at the UCD Centre for Research, Education and Innovation in Health Systems (UCD IRIS) at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems in University College Dublin for the past 5 years. Her PhD research focused on understanding and improving psychological safety in healthcare teams and was funded under the Irish Research Council Employment Based Postgraduate Programme and the Ireland East Hospital Group.
Rose Geurten
Rose Geurten is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Health Services Research, Maastricht University. After a bachelor in Medical Sciences and Engineering, she finished a master’s in Healthcare Policy, Innovation, and Management. In the field of the latter, her PhD research specifically addresses care for type 2 diabetes in the Netherlands. Using health insurance data, she has focused on analyzing the whole Dutch type 2 diabetes population and the distribution of their care throughout the health system. As this identified a high level of dispersion in care use, she hopes to delineate specific type 2 diabetes subgroups with similar resource use and to better understand their courses of disease to enable evidence-based tailoring and improvement of care in future research
Rui Dang
Rui Dang is currently a senior lecturer in economics at Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; and a guest professor in demographic economics at Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. His research interests are health economics, health policy, population economics , applied microeconometrics and quantitative methods in health care management and clinical research.
He serves as a member of the scientific advisory committee(SAC) of the EHMA-European Health Management Association, a Global Labor Organization fellow, and a member of the Global Health Competencies Sub-Commitee and SDG Tashkforce at CUGH-Consortium of Universities of Global Health. He is also serving as an associate editor for IJTACH-International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Concerning policy advisory roles, he has been included in the COVID-19 Expert Database – ICS/ICT extension under the Australia Academy of Science. Previously he was teachint at the University of Information Science and Technology, St.Paul the Apostle“, in the Republic of North Macedonia, and at department of economics at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He was working as a Postdoc at Dartmouth College, USA, and a research assistant at RWI-Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, Germany. In July 2015, he successfully defended my PhD dissertation in Economics at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Sanna Lakoma
Sanna Lakoma, MD, MPH, PhD student, University of Helsinki.
Sheila Mc Crory
Sheila Mc Crory is Head Medical Social Worker at Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin, Ireland. She has over 30 years experience in Medical Social Work. One of the priority clinical areas of her department is Child Protection. Sheila recently completed a MSc in Leadership in Healthcare with the Hse Leadership Academy and University College Cork. Her Master’s Dissertation focused on leadership competencies used by medical social workers in managing Child Protection cases as part of the multi-disciplinary team.
Sofie Van Steendam
Sofie Van Steendam is a pharmacist born and raised in Leuven, Belgium. She has two Master’s degrees obtained from the KU Leuven: Pharmaceutical Care and Healthcare Management and Policy. In her spare time, she enjoys baking, hiking, and spending time with friends and family. Sofie started her career at Amgen in 2019 as a Sr. QA Associate, and will join Daiichi Sankyo as of September 2021 as a Medical Information Manager.
Tania Gaspar
Tania Gaspar is Director of the Psychology and Education Sciences Institute at Lusiada University.
Tiina Tuononen
Vania Silverio
Vania Silverio is currently involved in scientifically innovative and challenging R&D projects combining nanotechnology with simulation tools for the design, fabrication, integration and test of microfluidic devices and sensors (INESC MN, www.inesc-mn.pt) towards Miniaturized Laboratories and Organs-On-Chip. Additionally, she is engaged on the definition of ISO Standards and Processes for Microfluidics [ISO/TC 48/WG 3; CEN/TC 332/WG 7; www.MFMET.eu; microfluidics-association.org].
She is author of several research publications in the areas of fluid dynamics at the microscale and microfluidics device fabrication. She combines her research with advanced training, teaching and theses supervision at the Master and PhD level at Instituto Superior Técnico, ULisboa (http://tecnico.ulisboa.pt), where she is an Invited Assistant Professor (Microfluidics course; Micro and Nanofabrication Techniques course).
Silverio is regular Peer Reviewer of several Scientific Journals and is frequently involved in the organization of International Meetings on Micro and Nanotechnology. She is member of The Microfluidics Association, IEEE Society USA, IOP, Portuguese Physical Society and European Physical Society. She holds a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering (Tecnico, ULisboa) and a Licenciatura degree in Technological Chemistry (5 years, FCUL, ULisboa).
Vassiliki Costarelli
Vassiliki Costarelli is an Associate Professor in Eating Behaviour and Health, in the Department of Economics & Sustainable Development at Harokopio University, Athens, Greece. She is a Dietician and a Registered Nutritionist (R.Nutr.) She is an active member of the Human Ecology Laboratory, of the above Department and her research interests are focusing on nutrition and dietary behaviour, health and nutrition literacy, diet and well-being, nutrition in vulnerable groups and food security, childhood obesity, nutrition and cancer and sustainable diets. She has 122 publications out of which, 68 articles in peer reviewed journals and numerous citations. She has an h-index of 21. Dr Costarelli is also a reviewer to more than 30 scientific journals and was the coordinator to a number of funded Greek and European research projects.
Yuliya Shcherbina
As Health Assessment Europe’s Development Lead, Yuliya Shcherbina works with healthcare providers to facilitate the implementation of accreditation and quality improvement programs from Health Assessment Europe (HAE) and their affiliates, Accreditation Canada (AC) and Health Standards Organization (HSO). Yuliya has more than 8 years of experience in international development, working on a variety of health quality improvement, relationship building, and communications projects. Since joining HAE four years ago, she has initiated and overseen the implementation of several accreditation projects by healthcare organizations located primarily in Southern Europe.
Prior to her current role, Yuliya also worked for the Canadian Stem Cell Foundation, developing and managing relationship building projects between clinicians, scientists and the community. In this role, Yuliya also worked with patients to facilitate knowledge building on advancements in stem cell research and the impact of clinical trials on patient care, both domestically and internationally.
In addition to working in various EU countries and North America, Yuliya is fluent in several languages including English, Italian, French, Spanish, Russian and Ukrainian. Yuliya Shcherbina holds a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations.
PhD Presenters
Carol Hilliard
Carol Hilliard is an Assistant Director of Nursing in Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin in Dublin, Ireland. She is a Registered Children’s Nurse and Registered General Nurse and has over twenty-five years’ experiences in acute children’s healthcare. She obtained a MSc Nursing and BSc Nursing from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and has recently completed a Doctorate of Governance with the Institute of Public Administration and University College Dublin.
Carol’s clinical background is in the area of burns and wound care in children. She has a strong interest in ethics and is a member of the hospital’s Ethics Committee. She has been involved in Irish and European research studies, and her research interests include moral agency in healthcare professionals, the family-professional relationship and service provision for children with complex care needs.
Lisa Rogers
Dr Lisa Rogers is a Research Scientist at the University College Dublin Centre for Research, Education and Innovation in Health Systems at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems in University College Dublin. She is a registered general nurse whose research interests include translating evidence into routine practice. Her PhD research focused on evaluating the impact of context when introducing change in healthcare teams. Her findings have contributed to the field of implementation science by 1) providing greater clarity and consistency for the term context by providing an operational definition of the construct; 2) developing a practical method to study and map context and 3) her findings have demonstrated the bidirectional influence between context and implementation and exposed additional contextual factors (e.g. micropolitics) previously overlooked in the field of implementation.
Olli Halminen
Olli Halminen is a project manager and doctoral student at the Department of Industrial Management and Engineering in Aalto University School of Science. His research focuses on analyzing the system-level interactions of different modes of care provision.
Halminen’s doctoral thesis employed nationally collected registry data sets to study the complexly interactive Finnish care system for older people. Via an inductive research approach, the thesis crafted managerial implications for the management of long-term care systems. The related model for long-term care system enables intuitive understanding and analysis of system-level phenomena, such as spillover effects and the preventive value of long-term care services.
Halminen’s research is positioned in the cross-section of health economics, systems theory, and management sciences. This multidisciplinary approach is especially useful in studying phenomena on meso level, or between the micro and macro levels of analysis.
Rachel Gifford
Dr. Rachel Gifford is currently a Postdoctoral researcher and teacher in the department of Health Services Research in Maastricht University. She completed her PhD in Organizational Behavior at the University of Groningen, where her research focused on the organization of medical specialists and hospital care. Her PhD research examined how physicians responded to various structural adaptations in their work that resulted from ongoing institutional and environmental pressures. This includes the pressure to move medical specialists into salaried employment, and the emphasis on integrating professionals to improve care delivery processes. Using an interdisciplinary approach and taking a micro level perspective, her empirical results reveal the relational and cultural barriers that are often overlooked, but play a crucial role in determining the outcome of reform efforts. These findings help to bridge the gap between theory and practice and offer insights into important micro level dynamics that may influence the success and outcomes of ongoing policy efforts.
Simone Laratro
Dr. Simone Laratro got a PhD in Management and Innovation at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan – Italy. From 2016 to 2020, he was a researcher at CERISMAS – Research Centre in Healthcare Management. Since March 2021, he is a Senior Consultant at PwC Public Sector – Italy.
His PhD research focused on healthcare operations and value-based healthcare evaluating the conditions needed to transform healthcare organizations.
His findings have contributed to the healthcare literature by providing different perspectives with regard to the value-based theoretical model. He analyzed value creation and the conditions of its implementation, looking at these phenomena from both providers’ and patients’ point of view. His findings have contributed to healthcare process redesign and organizational models, particularly focusing on how organizations should undertake operational changes and deals with value-based healthcare implementation through three different fronts: i) clinical pathways, ii) operational efficiency, iii) patient’s perspective.
Wouter van der Schors
Wouter van der Schors works as a PhD Candidate in Health Economics and Health Systems Research at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His background is in Medical Sociology and Health Law. Currently, his focus is on finalizing his dissertation on inter-organizational collaboration in market-based healthcare systems. In his doctoral research, he combines quantitative, qualitative and textual research methods to study the implications of collaborations for policy and healthcare management, the relationship with institutional developments and the effect of inter-organizational collaboration on quality in oncological care networks. Previously, he investigated health insurance decision making, quality measurement tools and the principle of solidarity in health insurance at the Nivel Institute for Health Services Research. In all his research work, Wouter strives towards building knowledge for well-informed decision-making useful for patients, policymakers and healthcare professionals.
EHMA PIE Presenters
Cláudia Almeida
Student of specialization in hospital administration at National School of Public Health, Nova University of Lisbon in Portugal. Master’s in Law and Management from Catholica University of Lisbon. Background in Law.
She is carrying out work focused on home hospitalization models and its implementation in Portugal.
Her main areas of interest focus on topics such as integration of care, risk management, ethical issues and safety and quality of care.
Ioannis Sarafis
Ioannis Sarafis received his PhD in 2018 from the Department of Electrical and Computers Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece, after completing his thesis entitled “Support vector machines for noisy and fuzzy labels.” He has worked as a research associate in the EU-funded SPLENDID project, where he developed data-driven models for the identification of risky eating and physical activity behaviours in adolescents and young adults. Also, he has worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the EU-funded BigO project, where he developed big data algorithms for the analysis of behavioural patterns related to obesity in children and adolescents and for the association of obesogenic behaviours to the individuals’ local environments. Currently, he is the Technical Manager of the EU-funded REBECCA project (https://rebeccaproject.eu/), coordinating the project’s scientific and technical work. His research interests are in the fields of machine learning and data analysis with noisy or incomplete labels.
João Frutuoso
João Frutuoso is a doctor specialized in Internal Medicine. He works in a tertiary hospital where he is also a union delegate. He did a post-graduate program in quality management in health care, and he is currently in a post-graduate program in Healthcare Management. His interests are optimization and simplification of processes in the clinical setting and workforce conditions.
Laura Cigolot
Laura Cigolot is responsible for the Secretariat of the European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicines (EAASM) and is a public affairs practitioner, leading the healthcare team on policy issues related to health and safety of the Belgium based office of Instinctif Partners, an international business communications consultancy.
The EAASM, formed in 2007, is a pan-European, non-profit patient safety organisation, currently focused on the adoption of medical, pharmacy and nursing practices, that aim to eradicate medication errors within the hospital environment. It also campaigns for a robust and harmonised EU regulatory framework to protect patient safety and to guarantee the safety, quality and efficacy of innovative nanomedicines and nanosimilars.
Other key activities include campaigning for the safer use of unlicensed/off-label medicines and compounding medicines and was influential in campaigning for the Falsified Medicines Directive and continues to support its implementation, especially in the hospital setting.
Rui Dang
Rui Dang is currently a senior lecturer in economics at Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; and a guest professor in demographic economics at Gdansk University of Technology, Poland. His research interests are health economics, health policy, population economics , applied microeconometrics and quantitative methods in health care management and clinical research.
He serves as a member of the scientific advisory committee(SAC) of the EHMA-European Health Management Association, a Global Labor Organization fellow, and a member of the Global Health Competencies Sub-Commitee and SDG Tashkforce at CUGH-Consortium of Universities of Global Health. He is also serving as an associate editor for IJTACH-International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Concerning policy advisory roles, he has been included in the COVID-19 Expert Database – ICS/ICT extension under the Australia Academy of Science. Previously he was teachint at the University of Information Science and Technology, St.Paul the Apostle“, in the Republic of North Macedonia, and at department of economics at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He was working as a Postdoc at Dartmouth College, USA, and a research assistant at RWI-Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, Germany. In July 2015, he successfully defended my PhD dissertation in Economics at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Sharmi Haque
Sharmi Haque is ASPHER Young Professional Medicine at Maastricht University.