Center for Healthcare Management

I found the conference to be extraordinary useful. A great exchange between different perspectives, all touching the healthcare industry, but from a different point of view and from various countries too. The different level of understanding generates new ideas to take home.

The forum has brought together outstanding speakers from all over the world on topics that are very important to improving performance of the healthcare system from medications, pharmaceuticals, health system delivery, the development of clinics in developing countries and in other ways. It is a very unusual conference for that reason because of the breadth of topics covered and the depth of the expertise that is available to the people to learn from.

This has been an extremely interesting experience because I just loved the format. It’s a small group, and the ability to interact with others in your field and beyond is the most important thing to understand different perspectives. As a physician executive it is extremely helpful for me to look at all kinds of different viewpoints when you’re innovating and when you’re creating a different model of health, or if you want to deliver care to a patient in a different way. I think understanding the different perspectives from the real world is so important rather than abstract, theoretical knowledge. The location is just the most beautiful and the food is delicious. The brainpower in the room is very stimulating. You feel motivated that you just got to do something. Things are moving in the right direction. This desire for continuous process improvement is fantastic.

It’s a very unique format because it is smaller, more focused, and an interesting group of people in a nice setting. The venue helps to make it interactive and lively and you don’t experience the typical issues like in large conferences where it’s all one-way communication; it’s actually a real dialogue here. I take home from the different talks that healthcare is just a very broad space: we talked about innovation, financing, developing companies, and the realities of taking care of patients.

This is a great opportunity for people around the world to come and share ideas. There are people from many different countries who have different perspectives and it’s nice to hear them and it’s refreshing to hear different people share their ideas and concepts…. What’s great about this format is that we get to share those ideas and bring them together, it’s a free flow of ideas and you’re not hearing lectures, you have a lot of interchange and it’s very enjoyable. I get new relationships, I have new ideas, have exposure to new concepts and new information some of it positive, some of it concerning.

It was very interesting especially with the chief economist from Allianz. An amazing point of view – the way he showed us how an insurance company can try to reduce its risk by investing in new technology in the healthcare system is very interesting.

It’s a great conference on a great campus. What I found especially impressive is the fact that general considerations and theoretical considerations were met with very practical presentations and discussions about the improvement of the health services that are supplied, so it was a nice symbiosis of macro and micro level perspectives.

I found that some of the problems on the French economy and the challenges they are having here in France are so similar to what we’re experiencing in the United States and I think it’s universal: everybody is struggling with the same issues, everybody is trying to find a way to contain costs and to not pull the net off people from a social perspective. I found that very interesting. The format is great. It’s so much better. I’ve been to so many conferences where there is one presentation after the other and there is not much interaction. Your brain can only absorb so much, but this is really interactive, it’s very dynamic, it keeps your attention. From my perspective – it’s a very great format relative to some of the other things I attend.

I think that this conference is unique because it provides an interesting multidisciplinary perspective, mixing legal competence with scientific evidence, and it is very much improving our culture and scope about a lot of subjects that are problematic. You change the scope, you change the point of view – it’s why Katharina is very important: she helps us to change our point of view about the subject; then we can find interesting solutions, innovative solutions, and it breaks the stigma about innovation because a lot of people don’t want innovation, don’t want that their everyday work changes, but with Katharina’s method this new perspective is not just proposed or suggested, but people are also integrated in the change, and I think that it’s very helpful that this type of conference is being organized. The format is about a few people with lots of different points of view in order to answer one question, one subject, to talk equally driven by a reasonable perspective. I think that this is the key to all our problems in the healthcare system.

It is very special that all people are experts, speak very clearly and sincerely on the subject and to the point. They are brilliant. I was very astonished by the level of discussion and it is really a dialogue. That’s what I liked about the format. Everything went very smoothly and there is a lot of content. I liked very much what Katharina said about innovation, how we have to manage things differently instead of speaking largely about it. She focused on culture and the definition of it. That’s a big challenge.

I like the diversity of the participants. It’s very interesting, their knowledge base is wide. The fact that we were speaking about topics openly and therefore there is a first-mover advantage in the whole situation here. Overall, the diversity of the subjects and the participants is very impressive. The format is very productive and nice to have: you allow smaller groups express themselves without leaving issues lost in translation. There is a privacy set-up and at the same time very it is participative. The participants are not afraid to be vulnerable. You don’t hide behind the numbers. The interaction I got during the training is very valuable. We will take home and implement, such as culture, incentives, and being realist to what is going to work and what is not going to work. A practical use for myself and my colleagues. It was a great investment that we have done from our organization in this training. I see a lot of value. To provide this kind of platform for us to learn and meet people. We are in the company of people who appreciate what we have done and not just tell us what to do.