Upcoming OECD Health Ministerial to discuss healthcare systems – opportunities and challenges

On January 17, Health Ministers from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries will gather in Paris to discuss how healthcare systems can reform to better deal with the challenges and to realize the opportunities of tomorrow. Important milestones are on the agenda including how to tackle ineffective spending in healthcare and how health care systems should adapt to new technologies.

Ahead of the meeting, Joseph Jimenez, president of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and chief executive of Novartis (NOVN: VX), commented: “The challenges: an aging population and the growing burden of chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular disease. Thanks to improvements in living conditions, socio-economic development and medical progress, we live longer than ever before. This is fundamentally a great achievement. However, as people get older, they often live with several chronic diseases at once. Healthcare systems face a dilemma of growing demand and the need to invest for the future, while budgets have been flat or declining following the global financial crisis.

“The opportunities: a rapid development of science and technology, including in biomedicine, biotechnology, genomics, and nanotechnology. We are breaking new ground in ways never seen before. For example, new gene editing techniques and stem cell therapies allow us for the first time to target the root-cause of many diseases. At the same time, we are in the midst of a rapid digitalization in healthcare, including the advent of big data analytics. We are creating the tools that can truly transform how we combat disease, how we deliver healthcare, and how patients manage their own health.