In November 2014, a first Seminar on the “Value of Health” was held in Brussels and led to the elaboration of a scoping paper examining the various approaches and frameworks to measure healthcare outcomes in Europe. Further to this, a roundtable was organized on March 5, 2015, to discuss “Healthcare Outcomes as a Drive for Sustainable Health Systems”.
Nowadays, healthcare systems have to deal with a new set of challenges caused by demographic evolutions and economic difficulties within Europe. As the population is ageing, diseases are likely to increase and therefore weight upon national healthcare budgets. In this context, the need to improve the link between economic value and efficiency of healthcare systems has become more pressing.
To this end, the European Brain Council (EBC) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations (EFPIA) invited stakeholders to express their views on this matter. Presentations were also provided by eminent speakers such as, among others:
- Mary Harney, former Irish Minister of Health, who focused on the importance of improving healthcare outcomes for sustainable health systems;
- Martin Seychell, Deputy Director-General at DG Health & Food Safety, who shared his expertise on healthcare outcomes and health systems performance assessment;
- Peteris Zilgalvis, Head of e-Health and Wellbeing Unit at DG Connect, who discussed the data governance as a way improve healthcare outcomes and overcome the related challenges;
In addition, representatives from Ministries of Health from the two countries who will next chair the Council of the EU, Anne Calteux, for Luxembourg, and Kees Molenaar, for the Netherlands, expressed their respective countries’ priorities to address this issue and improve healthcare outcomes.