A forum for action
The World Innovation Summit for Health aims to be more than just a meeting to disseminate research and ideas.
The World Innovation Summit for Health aims to be more than just a meeting to disseminate research and ideas.
The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) is a bit of a strange animal.
On the surface, it is one among many international conferences on health.
But as an initiative of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, it aims to be a platform for action, both internationally and locally in the small oil-rich state.
Its executive chair Professor the Lord Dr Ara Darzi of Denham explained: “It’s about, really, dissemination of evidence-based research and policy across areas of unmet need or the big challenges, which are facing health systems across the globe.”
For example, among the topics covered in the third and latest WISH held in Doha, Qatar, recently, were precision medicine, accountable care, autism, dementia, healthy populations, investing in health and infectious diseases.
Speaking at the pre-summit press conference, WISH CEO Egbert Schillings said: “WISH is not a conference.
“WISH is a community of leaders like the people you see on this panel, and many others who are dedicated to making a difference in healthcare.
“And that is ultimately, why we convene this summit, because that creates for us, the resources that we can then use domestically and globally to make a change in healthcare.”
He gave the example of the Al-Wakra SMART clinic initiative, which is the realisation of accountable care policy ideas mooted in the first WISH in 2013.
The patient-centred pilot project in the city on the east coast of Qatar aims to screen, diagnose and manage diabetes in the local community.
Around 9,800 people from the Al-Wakra population were invited to come for screening at the clinic launched in January 2016.
Last year, 1,580 were screened, of which 44 were found to be diabetic and 32 prediabetic.
“This is the beauty of this programme, once you can identify the pre-diabetics, you can start preventive treatment,” said Dr Mariam Ali Abdulmalik, managing director of Qatar’s Primary Health Care Corporation.
She added: “This project has helped us to do more coordinated kind of work – very comprehensive, very integrated between pri- mary and secondary care across the health system.
“It led to proper continuous care that showed patients the success of their management plan.”
The conference proper is actually a platform for expert advisory groups to share their findings on specific topics researched between each WISH with the invited international audience of policymakers, researchers and innovators.
The findings are also discussed by a separate panel of experts at forums during the conference.
The last two conferences have also seen policy briefing sessions being held.