The second edition of the Fórum Inovação Saúde (FIS), the Health Innovation Forum, was held on November 12, 2018 at the Museu do Amanhã, in Rio de Janeiro. National and international experts gathered to discuss and offer insights and experiences of high impact for the Brazilian healthcare system.
One of the organizers, Rodrigo Vilar, presented the event's main objectives: to bring together representatives of the entire healthcare chain, such as doctors, representatives of health insurance, homecare and diagnostic companies, pharmacists and researchers, to discuss obstacles and propose solutions for the industry; and bring back to Rio de Janeiro a large event focused on healthcare.
The president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Marco Lucchesi, conducted the first conference of the event, "A permanent moral for dialogue", during which he highlighted the importance of dialoguing and exchanging experiences and the need for public incentives oriented to the development of critical thinking at universities. "To build a civilization is to listen to all its members. Either we are part of a process that equals us, or let's welcome everyone to war", he added.
Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Carlos Gadelha, lectured about "The Economic-Industrial Complex of Health". Gadelha defended a different perspective of healthcare, not as an expense, but as an economic development front. "We must articulate the healthcare system with the society we want to be", he said, adding that, according to the Gini index, which measures social inequality worldwide, countries with the least investments in technology and expertise are the ones with the highest economic disparities. Gadelha believes that with the increase of the elderly population in Brazil, the form of investment must change: more money spent on prevention, stimulating changes in poor living standards, culminating in less money to be spent on medicines.
During the Forum's third conference , professor Lígia Bahia, from the Institute of Collective Health Studies [Instituto de Estudos de Saúde Coletiva – IESC], at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, spoke about the importance of dialogue and interaction between the public and private healthcare sectors, through a strong Ministry of Health. "It takes a lot of study and debate to devise on the sustainable development of healthcare", she said.
Patricia Ellen, Optum's president in Brazil, commented on the challenge of discussing healthcare in a country such as Brazil, carrying some peculiar features, such as the highest rate of population aging in the world, being a tropical country with infectious diseases and having high violence rates. "Technology must be applied on a large scale to make the healthcare system as human and accessible as possible", she said. The executive also discussed the concepts of the Internet of Things, Big Data and Blockchain and how these can be applied in the management of healthcare systems.
At the closing of the event, the granting ceremony of the 2018 Edson Godoy Bueno Award for Health Innovation – A Startup Challenge took place. Five companies were invited to submit their Pitches, gaining visibility among a group of 400 healthcare market influencers, and were then evaluated. The winner was Preditc Vision, developer of an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for imaging diagnostics.
FIS is an initiative of the Rio de Janeiro Chapter of the Brazilian College of Health Executives [CBEXs]. The next edition of the Forum will be held in 2019.
