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Friend of Tortoise Exclusive

Global Health Summit

Global Health Summit

This event is exclusive to Friends of Tortoise

  • About
  • Sessions
  • People
  • Notes
Read up

Do we need to change the funding model of the NHS?

Can we cure Alzheimer’s?

Are we ready for the next pandemic?

Health inequalities: how can everyone access the help they need?

Can we defuse the mental health timebomb?

Can we learn to live with Covid?


Further reading

As parts of UK enter third Covid lockdown, how does rest of Europe compare? The Guardian

Hesitancy about the Covid-19 vaccine is ‘disproportionately high’ among Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups Dan Wellings, Senior Fellow at The King’s Fund, responds to polling commissioned by the Royal Society for Public Health

Three million patients have missed cancer screenings since start of pandemic The Telegraph

Number of patients on NHS England waiting lists at highest level for 12 years Politico

Maternal, Newborn and Infant Clinical Outcome Review Programme MBRRACE-UK delivers a review on lessons learned to inform maternity care from the UK and Ireland Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity

Give the patients the money: a fairer system of overt healthcare rationing in the NHS, Dr D J Brown

It has taken the pandemic to show that the healthcare systems of the 20th Century are no longer fit for purpose. Covid has been the defining health crisis of the decade, but, if nothing else, it has proved that there must be a global rethink of public health policy and preventive medicine. Nothing should be off the table.

It will take investment, ingenuity and humility – not to mention global cooperation between governments, business, scientists, practitioners and people – to imagine, and quickly deliver, new innovations in health that are sorely needed.

Tortoise will convene a one-day virtual summit looking at immediate challenges facing our health. We’ll be talking with health professionals, scientists and patients to address the challenges that we face in the next decade. We’ll be asking and answering urgent questions such as: Are we ready for the next pandemic? Do we need to change the funding model for the NHS? And how can the transformative potential of health tech deliver real change in our lifetime?

How it works

Your ticket will give you access to all of the sessions, but just like an in-person conference you can dip in and out. Recordings will be available in our members’ app the next day.

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CEO of Alzheimer’s Disease International

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Director of the Runnymede Trust; formerly First Secretary for the Department for International Development (DFID)

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CEO, HDR UK

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President of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine

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Research Fellow, Royal Holloway

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Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University and advisor to the UK government on the pandemic

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Chief Executive of Mind

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Chair of Doctors in Distress and former chairperson of the Royal College of General Practitioners

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Head of Demographic Assumptions and Methodology, Lloyds Banking Group

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podcaster, journalist and founder of Mental Health Mates

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author of Contagion and John A Campbell Professor of Radiology at IUPUI

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Head of Research, Alzheimer’s Society

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Vice Chairman of the Royal Society for Public Health

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Director of the UK-Dementia Research Institute

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Director of Policy, The King’s Fund

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Head of Vaccines Programme, Wellcome Trust

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Shadow SNP Spokesperson on Health and Social Care and breast surgeon


Our team
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Co-founder and Editor

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Editor and Partner

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Editor and Partner

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Members’ Editor and Partner

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Editor and Partner

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Sensemaker Editor and Partner

More to be announced.

09.00-09.45

Do we need to change the funding model of the NHS?

The NHS is under pressure. A growing, ageing population coupled with increasing cost demands from new technologies means that extra funding will be required for our health system if it is to survive. Under this stress, how much longer can the UK promise care that is free at the point of need? Do France, Germany or other European countries hold the key to a more realistic future?

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Vice Chairman of the Royal Society for Public Health

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Director of Policy, The King’s Fund

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Co-founder and Editor, Tortoise


10.00-10.45

Can we cure Alzheimer’s?

Half of people who live to beyond 85 will develop Alzheimer’s disease – a disturbing statistic. For too long Alzheimer’s disease therapies were focussed on clearing beta-amyloid, but the results have been discouraging. After repeated clinical trial failures it feels like we’re back to square one. So what’s next in Alzheimer’s research? Now the world is taking a new approach, is there hope on the horizon?

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CEO of Alzheimer’s Disease International

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Head of Research, Alzheimer’s Society

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Director of the UK-Dementia Research Institute

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Editor and Partner, Tortoise


11.00-11.45

Are we ready for the next pandemic?

Thanks to vaccinations, many deadly diseases are now preventable. Covid-19 might soon be among them – but we still lack vaccines for other potentially lethal diseases that could become pandemics like the coronavirus. When the world reconnects again, our next epidemic may only be a flight away. How do we plan for a future of infectious diseases?

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CEO, HDR UK

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Research Fellow, Royal Holloway

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author of Contagion and John A Campbell Professor of Radiology at IUPUI

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Editor and Partner, Tortoise


12.00-12.45

Health inequalities: how can everyone access the help they need?

How to prevent such a chasm opening up in healthcare so that everyone gets access to the help they need? How can issues of gender and ethnicity be dealt with more systematically – the pandemic having illustrated all too starkly that inequalities can have real and tragic consequences? As it is, Covid has led to a disturbing backlog of cancelled operations, growing waiting lists and missed scans, with many people terrified of seeking health advice in the time of a pandemic. What stops people asking for help when they need it and how do we ensure everyone has equal access to treatments and medical advances that are available to them?

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Director of the Runnymede Trust; formerly First Secretary for the Department for International Development (DFID)

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Head of Demographic Assumptions and Methodology, Lloyds Banking Group

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Shadow SNP Spokesperson on Health and Social Care and breast surgeon

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Editor and Partner, Tortoise


13.00-13.45

Can we defuse the mental health timebomb?

Anxiety, loneliness and depression rates have exploded in the last year. Our collective experience of Covid has clearly sparked or amplified an array of serious mental health problems. Doctors worry that these may linger in the longer term – while the effects on medical health practitioners of a year of strain are also raising concern. How do we confront the stigma of mental health, both in and outside the health industry?

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Chair of Doctors in Distress and former chairperson of the Royal College of General Practitioners

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Podcaster, journalist and founder of Mental Health Mates

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Chief Executive of Mind

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Editor and Partner, Tortoise


14.00-14.45

Can we learn to live with Covid?

Another year, another round of lockdowns. But as vaccine rollout begins around the world, the question is whether 2021 is the year we beat Covid or have to learn to live with it. We have already been warned that some restrictions may still be necessary next winter. So how exactly will we live alongside an endemic disease once the most vulnerable people have been protected by inoculation?

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President of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine

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Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University and advisor to the UK government on the pandemic

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Head of Vaccines Programme, Wellcome Trust

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Editor and Partner, Tortoise

Timings and sessions subject to change.


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