GLOBAL MEDICAL FORUM II
The Convergence of Healthcare
The Cohabitation of Industry & Science: One Goal, Many Pathways
Planning is underway for the second Global Medical Forum ("GMF II") which will be held in Switzerland for four days starting on Monday, 24 March 2003.
There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to GMF I. This has made it clear that the Forum fulfils the need for the many constituencies in healthcare to come together to discuss, harmonise, and synthesise the critical issues which continue to confront all civil societies which wish to improve the wellbeing of their citizens and to make available to them those therapies best suited for the successful diagnosis and treatment of their diseases. Furthermore, the Forum serves as a vehicle to disseminate the voices of those involved in healthcare in order to make known the "drivers" of medical and technological discovery as well as the risks of discovery. Lastly, the Forum works to reveal how best to use and implement new knowledge for the betterment of the human condition.
GMF II will highlight the advances of the preceding months and will integrate them into a model of the future direction or paradigm of healthcare. The pace of discovery and innovation is increasing steadily. At the same time the social and political issues surrounding healthcare and its provision are also mounting. To harmonise these trends is one on the overriding goals of the Forum.
GMF II will seek to demonstrate a convergence of interest in the development of new technologies, new therapeutic agents, new protocols of treatments, new models and understandings of outcome analyses, new provisions of insurance, and new prevention of disease, all based on a better understanding of what future direction healthcare will take. Key questions to be explored include the following:
- What is the most productive and acceptable model for co-operation between universities and corporations?
- What are the medical implications of the application of super-high technology and information technology to basic research?
- What are the legal and ethical implications of these applications?
- Will the role of government in medical research change in the coming decade?
- Will philanthropic institutions become the fourth estate of healthcare?
The Board of the Forum believes that this march of progress and convergence is not to be halted and that only by working rationally, honestly, and forthrightly can all those involved in the physical and social sciences of healthcare truly benefit their enlarging global constituencies.
Detailed planning has begun sixteen months ahead of GMF II in order to guarantee the desired participation of leaders in all healthcare sectors.
For information
www.globalmedicalforum.org/home.htm