DOHA: The second summit of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), a global initiative of Qatar Foundation, is set to focus on methods to provide affordable care for cancer.
‘Delivering Affordable Cancer Care Forum’ in the summit will be chaired by Professor Robert J S Thomas OAM, Chief Cancer Advisor at the Department of Health, Victoria, Australia.
The aim of the forum will be to make practical recommendations that might enable policy makers to minimise the economic challenges and ensure sustainable access for patients to high quality cancer care.
Professor Thomas will lead a team of international experts to prepare an evidence-based report that focuses on the key issues surrounding affordable cancer care provision.
The report will include understanding cost issues along the pathway of clinical care, the design of innovative approaches for affordable delivery models for cancer care both in the developing world and in high resource countries, innovations around pricing and incentive structures for drugs and high cost treatments and assessing better use of technology advances to add value to current cancer care methods.
The Forum will then present its findings and recommendations for discussion at the next WISH Summit taking place on February 17 and 18 February 2015 in Doha.
Professor Thomas said, “This is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with a team of internationally-renowned experts and produce recommendations that will help policy-makers design, deliver and maintain affordable cancer care services while improving patient experience. This is a multidisciplinary group, and it is my hope that we will be able to discover new evidence-based insights and perspectives on an urgent health care challenge which affects the lives of almost everyone.”
Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham, Executive Chair of WISH and Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College of London, said, “The human, social and economic implications of cancer are immense. At a time when both the incidence and costs of treating cancer are increasing rapidly - especially in lower and middle income countries - it is undoubtedly one of the most important global health priorities.”
The Peninsula
