The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), a global initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), has announced that it will be a key supporter of the Apac Forum, the Asia-Pacific’s premier healthcare meeting.
Taking place from September 23 to 25 in Auckland, New Zealand, the Apac Forum will bring together 1,700 of the leading minds in healthcare to discuss innovation in healthcare and learn from leaders of pioneering programmes creating a tangible impact for patients and organisations around the world.  
WISH will hold two sessions at this year’s event. The first session, led by Professor Robert Thomas, chief cancer adviser at the Victoria Department of Health and Human Services and WISH’s Delivering Affordable Cancer Care Forum chair, will discuss the causes of inflating cancer costs and overtreatment, and present pathways to address these challenges, including promoting greater patient engagement.
Tackling the persistent belief that patient harm is inevitable in health, WISH CEO Egbert Schillings will lead the second session alongside Imperial College London’s senior policy fellow and director of operations, Centre for Health Policy, Gianluca Fontana, and policy fellows, Centre for Health Policy, Jessica Prestt and Didi Thompson.
This session will highlight key findings of this year’s WISH report, Transforming Patient Safety: A Sector-Wide Systems Approach.
The panel will focus attention on critical issues in patient safety and present innovative efforts to address them, in particular outlining the Leading Health Systems Network (LHSN), a joint initiative of WISH and Imperial College London.
Established in 2009, LHSN has worked with 21 health systems in 11 countries, helping them overcome the challenges they face in providing high-value care to the populations they serve.
“By sharing our research and expertise in affordable cancer care delivery and patient safety, we hope to inspire healthcare leaders in the region to take up the innovations and recommendations in our reports for the benefit of the patients and communities they serve,” said Schillings.
Last year, the forum convened in Melbourne and attracted more than 1,500 delegates, including senior managers, board and policy makers, clinicians and quality improvement specialists from throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Approximately 130 speakers across 42 sessions are scheduled for Apac 2015.