How to prepare for a future pandemic
The first debate focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, the event that four years ago forever changed the relationship between citizens and health. "In Germany, what we missed the most were good data, our structures were not prepared to have and process them in real time," said Thomas Mertens. “This must absolutely change in the future: we will need data and evaluate them in a very short time.”
Giorgio Palù emphasized how predictive models enhanced with artificial intelligence can help decision-makers make better choices regarding strategies to contain the spread of the virus. We cannot predict what it will be, but "the current global situation is very favorable for making pandemics pathogens," Mertens explained, "starting from the growing population of livestock, human demographic growth, to the possibility of traveling quickly." The European dimension will also be central, Palù emphasized: "We will have to establish a central entity, the HERA - Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority in Brussels, which is not enough, a little more than a bureaucratic office. We would need a European center where specialists can discuss and be able, as soon as a new pandemic emerges, to establish the most appropriate response to give. In Italy, the anti-pandemic hub of the Siena Biotechnopole, born on paper three years ago, is not yet active.”
Thursday's program
From the second day, Thursday, the event moves to the Padua Congress conference center, in the Fair area. At 9:00 AM greetings from the authorities: Daniela Mapelli, rector of the University of Padua, Gaudenzio Meneghesso, director of the Department of Information Engineering of Unipd, Roberto Vettor, director of the Department of Medicine of Unipd, Angelo Paolo Dei Tos, president of the School of Medicine of Padua, and Giuseppe Dal Ben, general director of the Padua Hospital.
At 9:40 AM, the event begins with the keynote speeches "Pushing Medical Frontiers: AI-Driven Breakthroughs in Medicine" by Mihaela van der Schaar (University of Cambridge, UK) and "From Hype to Ripe: Implementing AI in Health Systems" by Yael Ophir, Executive Director HealthIL (Israel).
At 11:00 AM the first session, "The central role of data," with Tianxi Cai (Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA), Manlio De Domenico (University of Padua), Björn Eskofier (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), and Rosario Rizzuto (University of Padua).
At 2:00 PM the second session, "AI for precision medicine," with Matej Oresic (Örebro University, Sweden), Jens Rittscher (University of Oxford, UK), Fabio Vandin (University of Padua), Davide Risso (University of Padua), and Mario Luca Morieri (University of Padua). The third session, "Ethics, Regulations, Fairness, and Explainability," starts at 4:10 PM with interventions by Giusella Finocchiaro (University of Bologna), Alessandro Fabris (Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, Bochum, Germany), Fabio Grigenti (University of Padua), and Guglielmo Tamburrini (University of Napoli Federico II), who at 4:50 PM will participate in a round table discussion. Registration for the scheduled meetings, free of charge, is still open on the website https://www.worldhealthforum.it.
