The 13th conference of digital medicine “The Future is Now” took place at Wespa Spaces in Zagreb. The conference was held in a special hybrid edition and allowed participants to follow this year’s conference online. This year’s conference brought together not only leading experts from Croatia, but also global and European ones.
The conference was welcomed on behalf of the Ministry of Health by Vera Katalinić-Janković, M.D., special advisor at the Minister of Health, who emphasized the importance of holding such a gathering, especially in the midst of a pandemic.
One of the important topics of this year’s conference was communication about vaccination. The discussion was attended by a well-known expert, pharmacologist from UHC Zagreb, prof. Robert Likić, PhD, Special Adviser to the Minister and Assistant Director of the CIPH Primarius Marija Bubaš, M.D., PhD, President of the Committee for Public Health from the Croatian Medical Chamber, Vesna Štefančić Martić, M.D., CSTO and CEO of BICRO BIOCentre Marija Lovrić, PhD and Igor Marušić from Croatian Telecom.
Panelists discussed about the current situation with vaccination, how to improve communication with the public and how the development of new technological solutions can help vaccination coverage.
Another important topic of the conference was the use of health data in cardiology. Panel discussion was attended by cardiologist prof. Maja Čikeš, PhD from UHC Zagreb, public health specialist from the Croatian Institute of Public Health, Ivan Pristaš, PhD, and the CEO of Veridian Healthstream, Denis Bičanić.
Božidar Ferek-Petrić, chief medical expert from the company Medtronic, introduced the participants to the topic of digitalization in cardiology.
The international part of the conference aroused great interest among audience from Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Vice President of the global company Medtronic, Trevor Gunn, gave a lecture on Data driven management.
Croatian representative in the international part of the conference Damir Detić, Market Access and Government Affairs Manager from Johnson & Johnson, gave a lecture on the topic of comparing the costs of the procedure and making a decision based on these data.
Senior project manager at EMEA-LATAM in Roche, Patricie Doisne spoke about patient care based on data-driven diagnostics.
Zoltán Chadaide, an expert and CEO of Brainomix Limited, also took part in the program, commenting on the use of artificial intelligence in the treatment of acute stroke.
Erik Lehikoinen from Logmore added importance to the conference with his lecture on the safe distribution of vaccines in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pandemic has brought into focus the use of non-medical technologies whose application in healthcare can help both patients and healthcare professionals in better and more efficient care. Despite the restrictions imposed to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic, conference participants took this opportunity to create new contacts and increase cross-sectoral cooperation.
