Life at what cost?: Hard choices in healthcare

Former member of the Board of the Nordic Council, Penilla Gunther currently sits within the Health and Welfare; Trade; Labour Market; and Nutrition Committees of the Swedish Parliament. She also leads the Parliamentary Network for Equal Care that she founded in 2010, where she organizes a number of seminars gathering members of Parliament to touch upon a broad range of issues in healthcare. Gunther is an active advocate for better diagnosis and prevention for patients with heart failure; fighting antimicrobial resistance as well as improving the funding processed in rare diseases.

Lee Heeson assumes the responsibility for the commercial operations for the Inflammation & Immunology franchise at Celgene, a global biopharmaceutical company focusing on the discovery, development and commercialization of products for the treatment of cancer and other severe, immune, inflammatory conditions. While Lee’s primary responsibility is to ensure the successful market launch of Celgene’s therapies in the inflammation and immunology space, Lee is keen on working collaboratively with all stakeholders on innovative solutions to overcome the challenges of our health systems and ensure that every patient has access to the right therapy at the right time. Prior to his current role, Lee has held several leadership positions in various pharmaceutical companies, working across multiple therapeutic areas and geographies, including Europe, Latin  America, the United States and Japan.  

A civil engineer in applied chemistry, Renaud Mazy has nearly 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry. Having previously worked as the Managing Director of Baxter, an American health care company, he has held the position of CEO at the Belgian University Hospital for Saint-Luc since 2011. In this role, he launched an ambitious project to revamp the hospital buildings by 2025, thus modernising the hospital, notably by implementing an integrated and computerised ‘patient journey’, which aims to better centralise the medical information of patients. With extensive skills in research, development and management, Renaud has spoken for topics such as hospitals of the future, and the role of digitalisation and artificial intelligence in the hospital sector.

Nathalie Moll leads the federation that represents the pharmaceutical industry operating in Europe. She has spent 20 years working for the biotech industry at the EU and national level in associations and corporate positions. Moll previously worked as Secretary-General of EuropaBio, which was ranked as the most effective European trade association in Brussels in 2013. In this post, she promoted a dynamic and innovative environment for the biotech industry in Europe. Moll was named one of the 15 leading women in biotech in Europe in 2017.

After losing her husband to melanoma, Bettina Ryll founded the Melanoma Patient Network Europe and developed a special interest in patient-centric clinical research, innovative trial designs and novel drug development concepts. Lately, her focus has moved to sustainable healthcare models ensuring access to innovative therapies for cancer patients and incentives for sustainable innovation. Her organisation seeks to address the problems EU Melanoma patients are facing in an independent, constructive, result-oriented and collaborative manner. Bettina believes in the enormous potential and capacity of patient networks to both educate and support patients as well as to capture data at the primary data source – the patients themselves.  

Andrzej Rys has held several key positions in local and national health institutions, notably serving as the Director of the Health Department of the City of Kraków, President of the Polish Public Health Foundation and Polish Deputy Minister for Health, a role which put him on the negotiation team for Poland’s accession to the EU. He later founded and led the School of Public Health and the Centre for Innovation Technology Transfer at Jagiellonian University. In 2006, Rys joined the European Commission as the Director for Public Health and Risk Assessment and was later appointed Director for Health Systems, Medical Products and Innovation at the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety, where he works on improving EU healthcare systems for citizens.

Gert Van Assche is a renowned physician, serving also as professor of medicine at the University of Leuven in Belgium and current head of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University Hospitals of Leuven. Van Assche’s primary research focuses on novel therapies in fibro genesis and mucosal immunology in the field of inflammatory bowel disease. He has extensive experience as an advisor and consultant to the health private sector industry in the gastro-intestinal field. With over 200 authored and co-authored peer-reviewed papers, Van Assche’s extensive scientific work and research has received grants and awards from across Europe, such as the Flemish Foundation for Scientific Research (FWO Vlaanderen), the Désiré Collen Research Foundation, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Inbev-Baillet Latour Foundation.

Tamsin Rose is a facilitator who was until recently a senior fellow for health at Friends of Europe. Having studied international relations, she has 25 years of experience working across the European continent from Ireland to Mongolia. A natural communicator, Tamsin has been a radio reporter, worked on press for the EU Delegation in Moscow and is currently a member of the external speaker team for the European Commission Directorate-General for Communication, describing how the EU works and key policies to visitor groups from around the world. Since 2002, she has specialised in public health and public participation issues, serving as the Secretary General of the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), and providing strategic advice for health groups on how to engage successfully with the EU.