Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I welcome you to the 1st World Health Summit and to the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Progress in medical care and medical research is developing with enormous speed in most fields. Pharmacotherapy and molecular medicine are moving towards a personalized approach opening new possibilities to tailor treatment to individual needs; modern neuroscience has opened the way to a completely novel understanding of diseases of the brain as new IT-based technology allows microsurgery and remote telemedical patient care systems.

Scientific progress is costly. New possibilities bring along new obligations to distribute the results of medical progress to every patient. The question remains urgent and open if and how we can afford an equal translation of progress to all parts of the population. Today health-care is the largest sector of Germany’s gross domestic economy. At the same time, the financial crisis and macroeconomic factors such as an aging population and insufficient public funding emerge as growing challenges for health care providers and for society in general. Robust models of partnership between the private and the public sector will be the basis for the innovative power of medicine and scientific development, and crucial for the translation of new insights to the people in need of them. Otherwise, the huge potential of medical progress remains far from being sufficiently realized.

We need new models of promoting and insuring health, and for delivering care. This task can only be solved by joint effort of those who produce medical progress, those who pay for it, those who market health and those who develop political and economic strategies for health care and research.

We have established the World Health Summit as a global medical forum, together with many partners from governments, industry and non-governmental organizations worldwide. It is in our common interest to solve the questions which arise by medical progress in a globalized world. We need to clarify the prerequisites for continuing our scientific work and for delivering its fruits to society.

The M8 Alliance of Academies, Universities, and Health Centers, is a network of highly prestigious medical institutions which will be inaugurated at the 1st World Health Summit. The M8 is a strong international academic platform with the mission to deal with the scientific, political, and economic issues of the World Health Summit together with stakeholders from politics and industry at the national, European and international level.

With its integrative character, the World Health Summit is established to have an advisory role for governments, business, policy makers, and health-care professionals.

The World Health Summit will also mark the starting point for the celebrations of the Charité’s 300th anniversary. For three centuries, this institution has been the breeding ground for many a milestone of modern medicine. With this proud tradition of innovation, the World Health Summit shows that the Charité retains its role at the forefront of medical progress. Welcome to the 1st World Health Summit, welcome to the Charité, welcome to Berlin,

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