08:30 – 09:00 Registration

09:00 Conference Opening

Nina Išek Međugorac

Director, HealthComm Forum

asst. prof. Irena Hrstić, MD, PhD

Minister of Health

With healthcare systems under unprecedented pressure, change is imperative. Discover how collaboration and innovation can extend healthy life expectancy and create sustainable models that reduce the burden of chronic diseases, improve quality of life, and secure long-term social and economic development.

The curative model of care is losing ground against mounting modern challenges. How do we make prevention the backbone of healthcare, not the exception? This panel explores proactive system reorientation – through expanded vaccination programs, early diagnoses, and screening – with collaboration among ministries, institutions, businesses, academia, and patients, to achieve measurable outcomes and cost savings.

Damir Ivanković, MD, MBA, PhD

Consultant, WHO Regional Office for Europe

The European Health Report 2024, published by WHO/Europe, provides a comprehensive overview of the state of health and health systems in the European region, highlighting key challenges such as the rise in chronic diseases, mental health, infectious diseases, and the impact of climate change and demographic shifts. The report highlights the need to transform health systems to be more resilient and sustainable in the face of emerging health emergencies.

Dr. Damir Ivanković, one of the authors of the European Health Report 2024, will present how the report’s recommendations can be implemented into national health strategies, including Croatia’s, with the aim of improving population health and strengthening interstate cooperation.

Through the experience and knowledge of managers from the healthcare sector about transformations, optimization and implementation of innovations, we discuss the new foundations of healthcare that, through prevention, personalization and technology, restore trust in the system, strengthen the social contract and renew the social safety net, creating a vision of health as a collective good.

prof. Niek Klazinga, MD, PhD

Consultant, OECD; Prof. Emeritus, University of Amsterdam

Based on the latest OECD and EU data, we gain insight into current challenges facing health systems, such as health worker shortages, fiscal and environmental sustainability, and changes in public trust in medicine. How different initiatives are trying to respond to these challenges while striving for value-based healthcare and balancing short-term healthcare needs with long-term outcomes?

How strengthening national health data infrastructure, along with appropriate health system governance and integrated healthcare delivery models, can help address these challenges and make healthcare systems more resilient?

Health is not just a medical issue – it reflects society. Health systems therefore need to turn to proactive, holistic approaches that connect health with social and environmental conditions, because the broader social picture affects health outcomes, but a healthy system can also contribute to a more just, stable society. The focus of this panel is on the role of the individual: how their behavior, environment and availability of support shape the overall picture of health.

Neven Zitek 

Cybersecurity Business Solutions Director, Span

Healthcare is rapidly becoming digital, electronic health records, diagnostic systems, communication between institutions – all of this brings more efficient care, but at the same time opens space for serious security threats.

Cyber-attacks on healthcare systems are no longer the exception, but an everyday reality across Europe. The consequences are not just technical – they affect patients, treatment and trust in the entire system. How can we ensure that healthcare systems remain reliable and accessible even in an ever-changing digital environment? Data protection is not just a technical challenge, it is the foundation of trust – and without trust, healthcare loses its meaning.

Healthcare today cannot function without data — it is crucial how accurate it is, how quickly it travels through systems, and how protected it is. For data to truly become a tool for better treatment, healthcare systems must be interconnected — and thoroughly protected. Without interoperability, there are no fast, informed, and timely decisions. Without security, there is no trust or sustainable development of systems.

Through concrete examples from practice, we learn how secure information flows — based on a solid, protected infrastructure — speed up diagnosis, prevent medical errors, and provide doctors with complete, timely, and reliable insight into a patient’s condition. Which directly leads to better, more personalized, and more humane healthcare.

This discussion raises a key question: how to build a secure and resilient digital infrastructure?

In the European Union, access to medicines does not depend on medical need — but on geography. Why do patients in Croatia and other smaller markets wait months, even years, for therapies that are already standard in others? The new pharmaceutical reform seeks to create a single market and a fairer system, but key questions remain: How to balance intellectual property rights with the right to life? How to encourage the arrival of innovations in less profitable markets? And what is the real cost of inequality?

This panel brings together key stakeholders whose experiences, views and suggestions are extremely important for shaping policies in which health truly has no borders.

08:30 – 9:00 Registration

prof. Søren Brunak, MSc, PhD, dr. phil. h. c.

Professor and Research Director, Department of Public Health, at the Univesity of Copenhagen Medical School

The increasing number of patients suffering from a range of chronic non-communicable diseases and receiving different pharmacotherapies represents a major social problem in today’s aging population.

We learn how precision medicine, with new types of data (e.g. genetic data) combined with health data analysis, improves diagnostics and treatment planning to enable individualized knowledge relevant to decision-making during treatment.

We are living longer, but while suffering from diseases. The key question is therefore not how much we spend on health, but where we direct those resources.

The panel focuses on concrete actions that decision-makers can initiate immediately, within existing policy cycles, while accelerating progress towards global goals – in particular, reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by 2030. Through an integrated approach, we show how smart resource reallocation can create a healthier, more sustainable and resilient health system.

This panel brings concrete solutions – from innovative medical devices and digital tools to personalized care and community support. Nurses, doctors, pharmacists, device manufacturers and representatives of patient associations will come together to discuss how modern approaches can make life with a diagnosis easier. Through practical examples, we will explore how by connecting the professionals, industry and patients we can create a more efficient and humane healthcare system.

We are bringing together the directors of the national public health institutes of Slovenia and Croatia, leading regional thinkers in the field of public health policy, to discuss the future of healthcare. A future that rests on the integration of health systems and public health, where prevention, health literacy and active citizen participation builds a resilient and sustainable society. In which public health institutions must actively shape citizens’ attitudes, trust in the system and intersectoral cooperation.

prof. Ivan Đikić, MD, PhD, dr. h. c.
Director, Institute of Biochemistry ll at the Goethe University

Let’s explore the key role of homeostasis of life processes in cells as the foundation of human health, presenting the latest scientific knowledge about the molecular connection and communication between 10¹⁰ cells in the body and how disruptions in this communication can lead to the development of disease. Based on these discoveries, approaches to treatment are increasingly successfully adapted to changes in the cells of each individual. Understanding these processes also allows us to more precisely predict the mechanisms that support health, paving the way for a personalized approach to medicine and lifestyle adjustments for long-term health preservation.

What until recently belonged to the distant future – early diagnosis, personalized care, prevention before symptoms – is today a reality as AI is changing healthcare faster than we could have imagined. The panel opens a conversation about whether AI – as a silent collaborator of healthcare professionals and systems – can fundamentally reshape healthcare, not one day in the future, but tomorrow. Because true breakthroughs don’t happen when technology becomes perfect, but when we start using it – wisely, ethically, and for everyone.