PD 07 - A Fast European Response to Pandemics using Data and Joint Investments in Health

Europe has spent 2020 dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused unprecedented health and economic impact across countries.

It may be too early to analyze and learn every lesson from this experience, however it is clear that responses to future pandemics will require closer cooperation between countries and new models of public-private partnership to introduce innovation in health products, data and healthcare systems.

This session, organized in two panels, will focus on the development of such cooperation.

Panel 1 will look at the role data has played in predicting, tracing and containing infections. It will mostly focus on what may be possible in the future if proper privacy protections can be assured and if countries collaborate to use the predictive power of big data and new techniques to assess rapidly the effectiveness of both social and biomedical interventions. A discussion will start on how these new partnerships might be funded.

Panel 2 will focus on how that funding may underpin new joint approaches to EU health security and crisis preparedness, including rapid deployment of emergency care capacity and new health technologies. It also involves development of flexible, state-of-the art, digitalized facilities for production of vaccines and medicines, which would ultimately support EU competitiveness and resilience. It will be important to have continued evolution of sharing of skills and knowledge between agencies and greater regulatory flexibility based upon that interconnectedness.

The session will maximize participation through electronic systems to poll, prioritize topics and collect the compelling questions from the audience.