On the first day of the conference Reinier Schlatmann, CEO of Philips, Dr. Usman Khan, CEO of European Health Management Association and Dr. Miklós Szócska, Director of the Health Services Management Training Centre (EMK) welcomed the participants.

Dr. Miklós Szócska emphasised in his interview to our homepage that EMK has been the member of EHMA society since 1992 and this membership has helped a lot in the international visibility of EMK. The director also added that they could take part in organizing an EHMA conference in 2006 and this year they could direct the conference: among others, they expanded the program with training workshops, therefore a real innovative and learning centred programme was put together – said Dr. Miklós Szócska.

He added that, also at the initiative of the Health Services Management Training Centre, a 27-hour hackathon (EHMAthon) was organized with the help of DEMOLA Budapest and Educate, where teams from various fields of expertise and their mentors worked together to solve an issue related to healthcare and technology. In this year’s competition, the question was about how to improve the healthcare systems of Europe’s less-developed areas by increasing the role of technological and digital solutions.

One of the main topics of the three-day conference was “big data”, which has an enlarging role in diagnosis-making as well as in treatment processes, giving a gradually more important role to practice-oriented research and data collection. The presenters also spoke about the growing importance of an active relationship between the participants of the industry and R&D, motivating researchers to open to the industry.

The future of healthcare was another important focus of the conference. Digitalisation, personalized diagnosis and treatment have a key role in the vision of the healthcare system of the future, while hospitals still remain in the centre of the healthcare system. The lectures of the conference presented a number of good examples and initiatives, motivating healthcare managers and strategic decision-makers to discuss and work together on elaborating the healthcare system of the future in the frame of panels.

Zsófia Haszon 
Photo: Attila Kovács  – Semmelweis University
Translation: Diána Módos, Edina Szendreiné Nagy