Speakers

MR Johan Sauwens
 

Maria Åsenius 
State Secretary to the Swedish Minister for EU Affairs Cecilia Malmström. Åsenius was previously a freelance journalist, and became an official at the Cabinet Office, co-worker to the former President of the European Parliament Pat Cox. During the years 2004-2008 she was Deputy Chief of Cabinet of EU Commissioner for enlargement, Olli Rehn Finn.

Arvid Carlsson
Was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research in neuropharmacology in 2000. He was recognized for his discovery of dopamine as a signal substance in the brain and that the substance is very important for controlling our movements. The discovery led to an effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease. In 1963, Arvid Carlsson’s studies of the function of dopamine led to yet another scientific breakthrough. He discovered that the drugs that relieve the symptoms of schizophrenia and other psychotic diseases work by reducing the influence of dopamine in the brain. Arvid Carlsson and his colleagues were also the first to realize that selective strengthening of the signal substance serotonin was an efficient and gentle way of treating depression. Prozac, which revolutionized the treatment of depression and anxiety diseases, is based on this mode of action. Arvid Carlsson is still known as a prominent researcher in his field.

Jonas Andersson
Member of the Regional Executive Board.
President of the Regional Subcommittee of Health, Region Västra Götaland, Sweden. As president of the Regional Subcommittee of Health in Region Västra Götaland, Andersson is the foremost medical politician in the Region and is ranked, among other things, the sixteenth powerful in healthcare Sweden 2008 according to the newspaper Dagens Medicin.

Mats Olsson
Business concepts strategist, and Director Health & Healthcare, working on societal analyses at Kairos Future International, based in Sweden. He has 25 years experience in the pharma industry, among other things as a marketing manager and analyst at Pharmaceutical Statistics.
Since the autumn of 2006, Mats has been involved in various development projects in Swedish Health Care. He is project leader for the long term study about Tomorrow´s Health Consumer. He is also project leader for studies about the Swedish Physicians and their changing situation in our information society.
Mats was elected Pharma Business Person of the year 2007 by the readers of Pharma online and the members of Pharma Network.

Kieran Walshe
Senior academic with nineteen years experience in health policy, health management and health services research. He has previously worked at the University of Birmingham, the University of California at Berkeley, and the King's Fund in London, and has a professional background in healthcare management. He is an experienced researcher, who enjoys working at the interface between theory and practice and values the opportunities it offers to engage with the policy and practitioner communities and to put ideas into action. He has particular interests and expertise in public services regulation; the governance, accountability and performance of public services; and policy evaluation and learning. He writes regularly for a wide range of journals including the British Medical Journal, Health Service Journal, Health Affairs, Milbank Quarterly, Public Money and Management, and Quality and Safety in Healthcare.  He has advised the Department of Health, National Audit Office, Healthcare Commission and other bodies. He is an appointed member of the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, and is the Research Director of the Department of Health's National Institute for Health Research service delivery and organisation research programme.

Inger Ekman

Her research focuses on patient/person-centered care which emphasizes the patient’s/person’s central and participatory role in his/her care. Prof. Ekman’s project Chronic care management: Shifting gears from fragmented reactive care to patient-centered proactive care. Implementation and evaluation of an innovative care model was awarded a substantial financial support by the Swedish Research Council in 2008.

In June 2009, the research program Toward Person-Centered Care in Long-term Illness: A Research Core Center whose coordinator and principal investigator is prof. Ekman was recommended for funding under the strategic research area Care Sciences.

Anders Olauson
Was involved in the founding of the Agrenska Centre in 1989. He served as director until 2004 and since then has been chairman and chief executive officer. He is responsible for establishing The Agrenska Virtual International Academy, a research centre for rare disorders. Agrenska was in 2005 appointed member of ECOSOC within United Nations, with “special consultative status”. Anders is member of the board of Eurordis, and was president from 1999 to 2001. He currently represents it as a member of the board of the European Patients’ Forum (EPF). He has been president of EPF since June 2005. Anders represents EPF in both steering committee and at The Pharmaceutical Forum, which was established by DG Sanco and DG Enterprise in 2005. 

Since 2006 Anders is a member of the advisory group for Health Research within DG Research. In 2005 Anders was accepted as a researcher within the PhD program at Gothenburg University. The Swedish Government appointed Anders September 2008, to be a member of the Advisory Council at The National Board of Health and Welfare.

 Norwegian Centre for Patient Education, Research and Service Development
Learning and Mastery Centres (LMCs) are located at all Norwegian hospitals. Their purpose is enabling patients and their next of kin to cope with difficult situations related to the illness, disability and treatment. The patient education is founded on a method of systematic user involvement in planning, carrying out and evaluating the various courses. “The Standard Method” provides the guidelines for the cooperation between professionals and experienced users, and seeks to ensure that professional knowledge and user experience is given equal consideration in the process. All patient education within the LMCs’ context is based on group activities.

Evaluations show that the method improves the quality of patient education. The courses’ content and form correspond better to the patients’ needs than if healthcare professionals alone plan and carry out the education.

Sandvin Olsson has headed The Family Project, a 4 year long national project based on systematic user involvement. The project was initiated and funded by the Norwegian government as a means to improve the quality of patient education concerning families of children with chronic illness and disabilities.

Sandvin Olsson has a Master Degree in Health Science from the University of Oslo, Norway. She also has a Bachelor Degree of Physiotherapy, University of Bergen, Norway, and a Bachelor Degree of Science in Psychology from University of Washington, USA.

Josep Figueras
Head of the WHO European Centre on Health Policy in Brussels. In addition to WHO, he has worked in collaboration with all major multilateral organizations such as the European Commission or the World Bank. He is member of several advisory and editorial boards and has served as advisor in more than thirty countries within the European region and beyond. He is honorary fellow of the UK faculty of public health medicine, has been awarded twice the EHMA price for the best annual publication on policy and management, and in 2006 he was awarded the Andrija Stampar Medal. He has been lecturer and head of the MSc in Health Services Management at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

His research focuses on comparative health system and policy analysis. He is editor of the European Observatory series published by Open University Press and has published several volumes in the field of health systems analysis including Health systems, health and wealth (2009), Impact of EU mobility (2009), Health Impact Assessment (2007), Purchasing to improve performance (2005), Health Systems in Transition (2004) Social health insurance (2004) Funding health care (2002) Critical challenges for European reform (1998) and European Health Care Reform: analysis of strategies (1997).

Paolo Tedeschi
Assistant Professor at the Management and Health Laboratory of Scuola Superiore S.Anna in Pisa. He coordinates applied research projects and contributes to executive education programs in support of the Tuscan healthcare system, its Healthcare Local Authorities, and has published on different topics. His main current interests in health service research are about strategic planning, organizational design and development, performance measurement and management.

He also collaborates with Cergas - the Center for research on health and social care management - at Bocconi University and SDA Bocconi School of management and the French Ministerial Committee for the evaluation of prospective payment systems. He also coordinates EHMA Special Interest Group on primary care management and is an associate editor of the International Journal of Integrated Care.

Dr Soffia Gudbjörnsdottir
Licensed physician, specialist in internal medicine and diabetes. She is associated professor at The Sahlgrenska Academy,Göteborg.  Soffia Gudbjörnsdottir has primary responsibility for  The Swedish National Diabetes Register (NDR). She is also an active participant in drawing up the national guidelines for diabetes care, a commission on behalf of the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare. NDR has been successfully implemented in Swedish diabetes care for more than 10 years, with participation from both hospitals and primary health care. It has given a unique opportunity to monitor the quality of care regarding risk factors and complications of diabetes, as well as changes in treatment. The NDR is now developing a method, based on recent developments in index theory, statistics, economics and applied mathematics, that will estimate how well an organisation fulfils the patient expectations regarding diabetes care as well as estimating quality of life as a part of the registration in NDR

Jacki Davis
Senior Adviser to the European Policy Centre,
a leading Brussels-based think tank. She is also a regular commentator
on EU affairs on both radio and television.
Until December 2005, she was editor-in-chief of E!Sharp, a bimonthly
magazine on the European Union which was launched in December 2001. Before that,
Jacki was editor of European Voice, a Brussels-based weekly newspaper on EU
affairs owned by The Economist Group. She was responsible for launching the
newspaper in October 1995 and remained its editor for five years.
Jacki moved to Brussels in 1992 as EU correspondent for the Daily Mail. She had
spent the previous five years working for the newspaper in London, starting as a
general reporter in 1987 and working on the newsdesk before becoming consumer
affairs correspondent in 1990 and taking up her post in Brussels two years later.

Dr Francois Decaillet

French national, holds a MD from the University of Montpellier, France and a Master in Public Health fom the University of Paris. 30 years of professional experience. Worked in Africa, Europe and Middle East countries, with a particular focus on health financing and health systems reforms. He worked 8 years as health policy advisor at the European Commission (DG Development) and then 8 years with the World Bank, as Lead Public Health Specialist and task manager for public health projects in Africa and the Balkans. Francois joined the WHO regional office for Europe in November 2006, as senior adviser and representative of the WHO Regional office for Europe to the European Union. Francois lives in Brussels-Belgium since 1990.

Martin Andreasson(m)
 Member of the Regional Executive Board and Vice president of the Regional Subcommittee of Health, Region Västra Götaland. At the national level he is deputy member of the delegation of healthcare at the Swedish Association of Local Authoreties and Regions (SALAR). Between 2002 and 2006 he was vice president of the subcommittee on equal opportunities for persons with disabilities, Region Västra Götaland 
 
Mr Andreasson has a degree in business management from University of Gothenburg, School of business, economics and law and has also studied public health at the Nordic School of Public Health. His main interest lies in implementing modern leadership and management practice into the healthcare sector and to raise public awareness on the value a good healthcare system creates in society."