It’s been a busy few months in the IFIC communication’s office. In March we launched our new website providing a more fluid and logical navigation, packed with relevant content for professionals interested in keeping up to date with the latest advancements in integrated care. You will find our Resource Section particular useful, and our blog, news and events sections will be regularly updated. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for further improvement and of course we will be happy to share your news and events relating to integrated care.
Conferences
In the same month ICIC15, our 15th International Conference on Integrated Care took place in Edinburgh. 500 delegates representing 30 nationalities attended the conference over 3 days. The programme featured over 150 presentations focusing on the latest research, innovations and practice from around the world, including keynote presentations from Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of Nesta speaking about People Powered Health, Dr Rob Reid, Medical Director, Research Translation from the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle on the Medical Home Model, from Sir Harry Burns, former Chief Medical Officer in Scotland on the social determinants of ill health, Dr Renee Lyons, from the Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation in Canada on their innovative approaches to managing complexity and Prof Ran Balicer on Clalit Health System in Israel. You can view interviews with these speakers and their full presentations on the conference webpage.
The conference acted as a focus point for a range of fringe activities and several European project meetings took place including for example the B3 Action Group on Integrated Care as part of the European Innovation Partner on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP AHA) and Project INTEGRATE, which is focused on benchmarking integrated care models for better management of chronic and age-related Conditions in Europe. International delegates from as far away as New Zealand were also involved in our pre-conference Study Tour to NHS Highlands in Scotland, the Catalonia region of Spain and Gesundes Kinsigtal in Germany, hosted by our CEO, Dr Nick Goodwin. (If you or your organisation is interested in a Study Tour, contact us for more info.)
The conference also acted as a platform to launch the WHO global strategy on people-centred and integrated health services (PCIHS) by Dr Edward Kelley, Director, Service Delivery and Safety Department, from the World Health Organization. The strategy builds on the lessons learned in recent decades and offers a way forward for comprehensive health systems design. The benefits of a people-centred and integrated approach are well documented: increased delivery efficiency, decreased costs, improved equity in uptake of service, better health literacy and self-care, increased satisfaction with care, improved relationships between patients and their care providers, and an improved ability to respond to health-care crises. The strategy is based on a common set of principles and five strategic directions are presented to enhance countries’ efforts to better coordinate care around people’s needs. The report is supported by a range of international case studies. The strategy in its current format is an interim report that will undergo further broad consultation, with a view to being submitted to WHO’s Governing Bodies in 2016. You can download the report and view interviews and presentations from our Resource Section.
This month we also met major milestones in the development of our next World Congress in Mexico and our next International Conference in Barcelona.
Last week we launched the call for papers for WCIC3 3rd World Congress on Integrated Care “Co-producing High Quality People-Centered Integrated Care for ALL” to take place in Mexico City, 19-21 November 2015. The conference is organised in partnership with The Secretaria de la Salud Mexicana, the National College for Specialists in Integrated Medicine (CONAEMI) and the University of Anahuac. The conference themes are 1) Care Coordination and Continuity of Care 2) People-Centered Care 3) Joint Improvement, Evaluation and Change 4) Creating an Enabling Environment and 5) Mobile and Digital Health Solutions. Deadlines for receiving abstracts is 18 June 2015. Early bird rates are available to 31 July by entering the code EARLYBIRD in the promotional box on the registration page.
The dates for ICIC16 the 16th International Conference on Integrated Care which travels to Barcelona, Spain in 2016 will be Mon-Wed 23-25 May 2016 and will take place in the same week as MIHealth Forum, affording local and international delegates to attend both events. The conference is entitled: Re-Imagining Health: Integrating services across the whole continuum of care Shaping the future of Integrated Care delivery: public health, healthcare services and social care working together and will focus on tackling the challenges of mental health; reinventing hospitals; mobile and digital health solutions; workforce issues; and enabling policies. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates on how to submit a paper. It is expected the call for papers will be announced early September. The conference is organised in partnership with the Inter-ministerial Health and Social Care and Interaction Plan of the Government of Catalonia, Hospital Clínic Barcelona and Forum ITESSS.
We are excited to announce that we have also now secured the location and dates for ICIC17 which will take place in Nybourg Strand and Odense, in the Region of Southern Denmark from 6-9 March 2017. Competition to organise our international conference is strong as countries realise the leverage hosting an international event like this can have from a political and policy development perspective. Both our most recent conferences held in Brussels in 2014 and Edinburgh 2015 have acted as platforms for developing or launching local strategies on integrated care and have provided opportunities for governments to engage with the local workforce on the importance of moving this agenda forward.
Ahead of the 2017 conference we will be attending and hosting a conference as part of WHINN Week (19-23 October) in Odense this autumn. WHINN week is a festival of events, exhibitions and business activities focusing on developments and innovation in health and technology. The European Telemedicine Conference and the Hospital and Innovation Congress will take place this week. IFIC will host a one day conference in advance of these major events on Tuesday, 20 October 2015 focusing on “Technology Innovations supporting Integrated Care at Home and in Communities”. The agenda is currently in development and more details will be available on our website shortly. Please note if you are interested in attending we only have 100 delegate places so you will need to secure your place early. Subscribe to our newsletter (scroll to bottom of our homepage) to make sure you stay informed of the registration details.
European Projects
We were delighted to host the Project INTEGRATE Advisory Board meeting in Edinburgh as part of ICIC15. The meeting provided an opportunity for the Advisory Board to provide commentary and review progress in the second phase of the project as well as providing thematic input and advice for phase three work packages. In April we travelled to Brussels for a scientific committee meeting and are happy to report the deliverables for phase two of the project are almost complete. Phase two of the project has been focusing on how we can better design care process, identify needs of professional capacity building, involve patients in the care process, redefine financial flows and regulatory issues and see how IT can better support this innovative way of addressing the health systems most pressing issues. To stay up to date with this project visit the project website and subscribe to the newsletter. The most recent newsletter can be viewed here.
On 13 May, Nick and I attended the launch meeting of Sustain. Sustain is an EU project funded through Horizon2020 and aims 1) to improve established integrated care initiatives for older people living at home with multiple health and social care needs, ensuring they are patient-centred, prevention oriented, efficient, resilient to crises, safe and sustainable and; 2) to ensure that improvements to the integrated care initiatives are applicable and adaptable to other health systems and regions in Europe. IFIC will lead on the translation of results into the development of a roadmap which will be an important and practical deliverable of the project. This roadmap will be targeted at policy-makers and decision-makers in care systems tasked with designing, establishing and maintaining systems of integrated care that focus on older people with complex needs. This project will run for four years.
Member’s Network
Finally, as part of the move to our new website we have been developing an online platform for our members. This platform will allow our members to socially interact with each other within a multi-blogging platform environment. Member’s will be able to: create a profile to include their photo, biography and interests; you can private message other members; connect with friends in a similar way to Facebook; set up groups where you can share information and useful resources on particular topics and; create forums to focus on particular questions or subject areas, a space for collaboration and ideas exchange. We are currently in the process of moving our 500 existing members onto the platform and will shortly be sending out a briefing guide on how to use the platform in order to maximise its features. If you are interested in becoming a member you can sign up via our website.
If you have a suggestions for how we can improve our membership scheme or would like to take a more active role in our organisation, please do not hesitate to contact me at fionalyne@integratedcarefoundation.org and remember if you haven’t done so already, please like us on Facebook and follow us on twitter @IFICinfo
Fiona Lyne
Director of Communications
International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC)