While all eyes were on the results of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 9, a speaker at the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations conference in Brussels, Belgium, was introducing a concept that could bring equally seismic changes to the field of health care.
Coining the word “patientcentricity,” speaker Bettina Ryll of the Melanoma Patient Network shared her personal story of patient advocacy that began when her husband passed away less than a year after a skin cancer diagnosis.
Ryll, chair of the European Society of Medical Oncologists Patient Advocacy Working Group, helps empower patients to understand their diseases and have a voice in the treatment and study of their diseases.
Her mantra to health care providers is “you don’t know what you don’t know,” a piece of wisdom based on her belief that patients are often an ignored resource in the improvement of health care.
Other topics covered at the conference included health system efficiency, sustainable budgets vs. aging populations, improved testing of new medicines and collaborative solutions for health care challenges.
