EHMA Annual Conference at IESE
Europe Faces New Health Care Challenges

An integrated Europe is providing both opportunities and challenges in the health care sector, according to speakers at the recent European Health Management Association conference, held at IESE’s Barcelona campus.

Titled “Managing Innovation in the Health Sector,” the conference drew 240 participants from 27 countries, coming from the United States, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and Taiwan as well as nearly all the countries within the Europe Union.

The EHMA is a network organization aimed at enhancing managerial standards and performance in the health sectors of different European countries, to carry out research and to represent its members at high-level EU meetings.

Integrating health care across borders requires the early involvement and support of professionals and patients alike, if it is to result in high-quality care and greater coordination of health systems. This was the message that emerged in one of the sessions held during the conference, which was titled “Innovating Across European Borders.” During the session, which was chaired by Nick Fahy of the European Commission, researchers described five case studies undertaken as part of the “Europe for Patients” research project.

Magdalene Rosenmöller, IESE professor and scientific coordinator of the “Europe for Patients” project, noted that an increasingly integrated Europe offers potential benefits to patients, who are traveling across borders to access health care, either by personal choice, or because their home country has sent them there, they are on vacation retired abroad, or they are operating within the framework of a cooperative care agreement that exists between certain countries.

The session highlighted that innovation in the health care sector was possible across European borders, despite the many challenges, and that member states need to take account a range of factors when formulating national health care strategies.
The case studies of the “Europe for Patients” research project - which is sponsored under the European Commission FP6 Research programme and coordinated by IESE - are due to be pu-blished in book form at the end of this year, full results and recommendations are expected at the end of 2006.

In another session, Harvard Professor Richard M.J. Bohmer, addressed innovation creation in the context of health management. He described how there has been a "knowledge explosion" in the medical field in recent years, and managers need to take steps to better exploit this new knowledge.