Patient associations discuss the importance of contact and exchange between healthcare stakeholders

As a follow-up to the BMS Global Patient Week, we organized a meeting for Belgian patient associations on the importance of contact and exchange between the different actors in healthcare. 

This theme stems from our survey 'Because there is more to do', conducted in 2020 and 2021, in which the various respondents mentioned an increased need for collaboration between the different healthcare stakeholders in order to improve the patient's quality of life.

We welcomed two external speakers:

    o   Johan Van Weyenbergh, an experienced scientist from KU Leuven, spoke about communication between scientists and patients.

    o   Professor Darius Razavi, psychiatrist and professor of psychosomatics and psycho-oncology at the Jules Bordet Institute, spoke about the need to improve communication in cancer care in order to improve the quality of life of patients and caregivers.

We ended the day with a workshop with the patient organization representatives to get a better idea of their needs and priorities.

The ideas resulting from this exchange could form the basis of possible further steps we might take to support contact and exchange between health care actors and to improve the patient journey. We are convinced that we must always strive to do more for patients beyond the development, production and distribution of medicines.

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