The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), a global initiative of Qatar Foundation, will be a key supporter of the Apac Forum, the Asia-Pacific’s premier healthcare meeting.

Taking place on September 23-25  in Auckland, New Zealand, the Apac Forum will bring together 1,700 of the leading minds in healthcare to discuss innovation in healthcare and learn from leaders of pioneering programmes making tangible impact to patients and organisations around the world.  

WISH will hold two sessions at this year’s event. The first session, led by Professor Robert Thomas, chief cancer advisor at the Victoria Department of Health and Human Services, and WISH’s Delivering Affordable Cancer Care Forum chair, will discuss the causes of inflating cancer costs and overtreatment, and present pathways to address these challenges, including promoting greater patient engagement.

WISH chief executive officer Egbert Schillings will lead the second session alongside Imperial College London’s senior policy fellow and director of operations, Centre for Health Policy, Gianluca Fontana and policy fellows, Centre for Health Policy, Jessica Prestt and Didi Thompson.

This session will highlight key findings of this year’s WISH report, Transforming Patient Safety: A Sector-Wide Systems Approach.  The panel will focus attention on the critical issues in patient safety and present innovative efforts to address them, in particular outlining the Leading Health Systems Network (LHSN), a joint initiative of WISH and Imperial College London.

Schillings said: “WISH is delighted to support this year’s Apac Forum, the Asia-Pacific’s biggest and most significant healthcare meeting. By sharing our research and expertise in affordable cancer care delivery and patient safety, we hope to inspire healthcare leaders in the region to take up the innovations and recommendations in our reports for the benefit of the patients and communities that they serve.”

The Apac Forum is designed for health professionals who can influence change. Last year, the forum convened in Melbourne and attracted over 1,500 delegates, including senior managers, board and policy makers, clinicians and quality improvement specialists from throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Approximately 130 speakers across 42 sessions are scheduled for Apac 2015. – TradeArabia News Service