On the sidelines of the 76th World Health Assembly, Harvard University’s Professor of Global Health Systems, Rifat Atun, the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies (CIFS), Microsoft, Roche, and Siemens Healthineers got here together to announce the formation of the Movement Health Foundation. While many countries all over the world are facing enormous pressures on their healthcare systems, populations continue to grow, persons are living longer, chronic diseases are on the rise, and infectious diseases remain a threat, the Foundation goals to foster collaboration across sectors to ultimately provide access to quality health take care of all people, now and in the longer term.

Image Credit: Movement Health Foundation

Working on the bottom with governments, entrepreneurs, healthcare providers and patients, the Movement Health Foundation will harness the expertise, skills and resources of its founding partners to equip healthcare systems for the demands of the longer term and help them adopt the digital innovation needed to create the change that best serves the world’s healthcare needs. Through a five-step approach of challenge identification, local networking, focused policy change work, incubation of solutions and pilots, and scaling, the Foundation goals to create long-term impact while fostering collaboration, best practice sharing, and entrepreneurship.

On their end, CIFS will leverage the facility of information to locate innovation challenges and bottlenecks, together with opportunities for cross-border collaboration that can help countries overcome their most pressing health issues; Siemens Healthineers will explore ways to use revolutionary patient-centric solutions in areas akin to AI-driven diagnostics, and Roche will leverage its deep understanding of medical biology and long-term approach to maximising innovation to assist make universal access to quality healthcare a reality; all of them guided by strategic advice from the Chair of the Foundation, Professor Atun, who’s committed to accelerating universal health coverage to develop resilient health systems.

“Critical for the sustainability of health systems can be their ability to harness the facility of digital and AI technology to speed up a more equitable global delivery of healthcare across patients, practitioners and systems. We’re proud to be certainly one of the founding partners of Movement Health and see the Foundation as a catalyst for this transformation to bring value for patients and society,” said Tom McGuinness, Corporate Vice President, Global Healthcare and Life Sciences at Microsoft, the corporate that can harness the potency of technology to discover and drive breakthrough solutions to deal with the needs identified by the Foundation. 

“The challenge of tackling the world’s biggest health issues can’t be solved by one organisation or company alone, but by harnessing the insights and capabilities of leading institutions and cross-industry partners,” said Professor Atun, who chairs the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, in regards to the origin of this community. “Through an inclusive partnership approach, Movement Health Foundation could make an actual difference on a world scale,” he concluded. Professor Atun has been a part of the muse because it was first launched in Latin America as a learning initiative in 2019, with the goal of constructing more responsive, resilient, and equitable health systems on this region by combining digital innovation and policy shifts to assist achieve the daring goal set by the United Nations to scale back premature mortality from major illnesses by one-third by 2030.

Movement Health has seen notable successes in countries akin to Chile, where a 30% reduction in time to effective treatment for lung cancer patients has been achieved and Peru, where a dramatic improvement in key performance indicators, particularly for early childhood development and health workforce productivity were achieved without the necessity for increased budget spending. It has recently expanded to develop into a world program reaching Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, and now, as an official foundation comprising leading corporations and individuals from various sectors, it should speed up its work by partnering to effectively help transform health systems all over the world.

Rolf Hönger, Vice President of the Foundation’s Board, Area Head of LatAm at Roche Pharma, and has been a part of Movement Health since its inception, said: “Once we launched Movement Health in Latin America, we didn’t foresee that a pandemic would put our healthcare systems under even greater pressure, but we did know one thing: we would have liked to strengthen them for the longer term of humanity. The events of the past three years haven’t only reaffirmed our commitment to a way forward for accessible, high-quality healthcare for all, but they’ve also made Movement Health Foundation stronger.”

As leaders within the healthcare industry and co-founding partners of the Movement Health Foundation, we’re all driven by the chance to make focused impact on underserved populations by combining the facility of our unique capabilities and our commitment to constructing more sustainable healthcare systems all over the world. We share the idea that health is a fundamental human right and that everybody must have the chance to learn from the innovations in healthcare, for instance improved diagnostics to catch diseases early.”

Tisha Boatman, Senior Vice President Global Access to Care Siemens Healthineers and Movement Health Board Member.

Health is an important pillar for equality, equity, for reducing poverty and for developing sustainable societies. Systemic change of healthcare is a major component of the Foundation’s purpose. We would like to construct future proofed and intergrated health systems globally. By collaborating across countries and continents, we aim to resolve the most important challenges of health: improving equal access to quality health care and reducing the avoidable disease burden,”

Bogi Eliasen, CIFS Health Director and Member of the Board of the Foundation.

Movement Health Foundation is committed to being a catalyst for change and a pacesetter of motion on a mission to arrange and transform health systems, with the rights, expectations, and hopes of future generations front of mind.

Source:

Movement Health Foundation