● Movement Health Foundation (Fundación Movimiento Salud) has as founding members Professor Rifat Atun, from Harvard University; Roche, the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, Microsoft and Siemens Healthineers.
● Movement Health seeks to be a catalyst for the development of health care systems to be more equitable, sustainable and resilient, thereby generating exponential impacts around the world by developing and scaling shared solutions to health care challenges. health.
● The Foundation has a presence in 5 regions and 25 countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
● In Chile, where the biggest challenge is the long waiting lists for specialist care whose times increased 365% during COVID, the Movement promoted the creation of a platform that integrates the data of lung cancer patients from diagnosis to recovery, reducing times.
The world’s public health systems face enormous and very similar pressures. The most visible are the increase and aging of the population, two variables that lead to an increase in chronic diseases and, with them, health costs.
Only in Latin America, according to the CAF, in 30 years the population over 65 will double, and with it the challenges in terms of health. A report from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) warns that health spending trends are on an upward trajectory, and without good information systems, inefficiencies will translate into higher costs.
Even more worrying is that inequalities in access are not diminishing and quality health care remains elusive for millions of people.
Against this background, on May 21, the professor of Global Health Systems at Harvard University, Rifat Atun; the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies (CIFS); Microsoft, Roche and Siemens Healthineers announced the creation of the Movement Health Foundation on the sidelines of the 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Foundation’s goal is to transform health systems by collaborating across sectors—governments, employers, health care providers, and patients—to provide access to quality health care for all people, both now and in the future. With the officialization of the Foundation, Movimiento Salud will have heavyweights, with great experience and skills, to achieve that goal of making the systems of Latin America and the world more sustainable and efficient.
“The challenge of tackling the world’s biggest health problems cannot be solved by a single company or organization, rather we must draw on the insights and expertise of major cross-industry partners,” said Professor Atun, who has trained part of the foundation since its launch as a pilot initiative in Latin America in 2019 and today chairs the board of directors of the Foundation.
“The ability to harness the power of digital technology and AI will be essential to ensure the sustainability of health systems and to accelerate a more equitable global delivery of health care between patients, professionals and systems. We are proud to be one of the founding partners of Movement Health and we see the Foundation as a catalyst for this transformation to deliver value to patients and society,” said Tom McGuinness, corporate vice president of Global Health and Life Sciences at Microsoft, a company that will harness the power of technology to identify and promote innovative solutions that address the needs identified by the Foundation.
“As leaders in the healthcare industry and co-founding partners of the Movimiento Salud Foundation, we are motivated by this opportunity to impact underserved populations by combining the power of our unique capabilities and our commitment to building health care systems. sustainable healthcare around the world,” said Tisha Boatman, Senior Vice President, Global Access to Care, Siemens Healthineers and Health Movement Board Member. “We share the belief that health is a fundamental human right and that everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from innovations in healthcare, such as improved diagnostics to detect disease early.”
Rolf Hönger, who is Vice President of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, Area Head of LatAm at Roche Pharma, and who has been part of the Salud Movement since its inception, said: “When we launched the Movement in Latin America, we did not anticipate that a This pandemic would put our healthcare systems under even greater strain, but we did know one thing: we needed to strengthen them for the future of humanity.These events have not only reaffirmed our commitment to facilitating equitable access to healthcare, but have also made stronger to the Foundation”.
Thanks to these efforts, the Foundation can already present notable successes in countries like Chile, where public-private collaboration was achieved to address optimization in the resolution of cases in patients with lung cancer. As well as in Peru, where there has been a dramatic improvement in key performance indicators, especially for early childhood development and the productivity of the health workforce. All this without the need to increase budget spending.
This is how in Chile, where the biggest challenge is the long waiting lists for the attention of specialists whose times increased 365% during COVID, they decided to address this problem through the collaboration of “startups” (Pegasi, Entelai and Aim Manager). , CENS and the National Thoracic Institute (INT) to work on a systemic solution. Currently, they are in the implementation phase of the platform that integrates data from lung cancer patients from referral and diagnosis to treatment, creating a constant communication flow that keeps interested parties connected and contributes to clinical decision making, while reducing administrative tasks.
“We believe that the future belongs to no one, but to everyone, and so we want to leverage our global knowledge to contribute to the goal of creating future-proof, integrated and sustainable healthcare systems around the world,” said Bogi Eliasen, Director of Health of the CIFS and member of the Board of the Foundation, who agrees that “equal access to quality healthcare is essential so that everyone can live better and healthier lives, and must be a priority for any sustainable healthcare system” .
