Global Health Summit

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.

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

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?