BIOGRAPHIES

V International Conference
CHALLENGES FOR EFFICIENT HEALTH CARE IN CENTRAL EASTERN EUROPE

Wija Oortwijn

Wija Oortwijn studied health sciences and holds a PhD in Medicine. Dr. Oortwijn has more than 20 years of relevant professional experience in policy analysis with regard to health care, life sciences and public health. Examples include the ex ante evaluation of the Draft EC Regulation on Medicinal Products for Paediatric Use. She led a project on the impact of HTA on prescribing patterns of diabetes and rheumatic arthritis drugs in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia and a project that assessed the impact of HTA in the process of pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement in a selection of 10 middle-income countries. The outcomes of this research have been published in Health Policy. In addition, she developed an instrument to map the level of HTA at country level. This was applied to selected middle-income countries (Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and Russia) as well as to countries well-known for their comprehensive HTA programs (Australia, Canada and United Kingdom). The instrument and the results of the application were published in the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Finally, she conducted a study on methods and processes that can support timely decisions on reimbursement of health technologies, especially in Brazil, Serbia, Slovakia and Taiwan. She has also coordinated and participated in different European collaboration networks focusing on HTA (Eurassess, HTA Europe, ECHAHI/ECHTA). She is also a founding Member of International Society for HTA (HTAi) and was involved in the organisation of several annual HTAi conferences. Furthermore, she is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care.

Krzysztof Łanda

The Founder of Watch Health Care Foundation (www.WatchHealthCare.eu). The CEO of MedInvest Scanner Ltd. General partner in HTA Audit, a company dealing with quality of HTA (Health Technology Assessment) reports directed to authorities and public institutions in Poland; expert of BCC on health care system. From 2010 till 2011 he was President of Central & Eastern European Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care. In 2006-2007 Dr Landa was the Director of Drug Policy Department in the Central Office of National Health Fund. In 2004 Krzysztof Landa was elected to the Board of Directors of Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) and performed his duties till mid 2007. He was the Chairman of the LOC of the first HTAi Annual Meeting 2004, held in Krakow, Poland. Dr Landa is a graduate of the University School of Medicine and received his management education at the Postgraduate School of Public Health of Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Promotion of HTA in the region of CEE resulted in international cooperation in education and HTA. Dr Landa organized many national and international HTA workshops and conferences. In years 2006 – 2008 Dr Landa provided consultancy for the Serbian Ministry of Health. He was team leader of the World Bank project aimed at introduction of HTA in Serbia, implementation of EBHC principles to the management of basic benefit package and designing a governmental HTA Agency.

Vanesa Benkovic

Senior consultant HTA, HE and Research, Croatian Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Health Economics, Zagreb, Croatia. Vanesa Benkovic, graduated her masters study as manager in health and health services at Medical Faculty, University of Zagreb. She is currently finishing her PhD thesis on health inequalities at Faculty of Philosophy, Sociology Dpt. University of Zagreb. Vanesa graduated several educations in field of pharmacoeconomics, health economics and advanced modeling in HTA in France and Austria. She received Open Society scholarship at Global Health Economics project by European University of St. Petersburg, Russia. She teaches pharmacoeconomics and health economics at Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Pharmacy University of Zagreb, and health statistics at European University of St. Petersburg GHE courses. Her field of work includes extensive list of health economic analysis for drugs, devices, technologies and cost of illness studies in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as research methodology for various EU JA projects such as Urban health centers Europe and Cross border patient registries initiative (PARENT). She also designs and performs market and scientific research in health. Her latest engagements include health business intelligence for a World Bank project for Croatian Ministry of Health and strategic consultancy both for pharmaindustry and budget holders. She publishes papers in area of research methodology, public health, pharmacoeconomics and health economics. Currently Vanesa is setting up business including IT applications for polypharmacy.

Norbert Wilk

Norbert Wilk, Arcana Institute’s Consultancy Department Director. He was a deputy director for HTA and international cooperation of the Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System in Poland for 3 years. He is responsible for introducing a two-step system (assessment – appraisal) of preparing recommendations on financing health technologies in Poland which is evidence-based in compliance with EBM/HTA principles.
He was head of the Ministry of Health’s Accreditation Office, where his work lead to issuing the first practice quality standards by way of regulation – for medical diagnostic laboratories. He also worked on updating reimbursement lists in the Reimbursement and Prices Unit of the Ministry of Health’s Drug Policy and Pharmacy Department. He was a co-author of the first Polish HTA reports while working in the Standardisation Bureau of the Centre for Quality Monitoring in Health Care.

Angela Yu

Angela Yu graduated from Master’s Health Policy, Planning and Financing, offered jointly by the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2015. Prior to her Master’s, Angela worked as Management Consultant in China for 5 years with the group IMS Health. In her work as a Consultant, she was charged with providing multi-national biopharmaceutical companies, NGO’s and industry associations with strategies which helped to maximize opportunities in Pricing and Market Access. During her time in China, she also participated in many independently commissioned policy-analysis and policy-shaping projects, which aimed to ensure the future of China’s pricing and market access policies deliver sustainable growth for the nation, while meeting the needs of the Chinese population.

Mark Parker

Mark Parker is Senior Economic modeller for the University of Liverpool Health Economic Unit, Liverpool Cancer Trials Unit and Technical director of Evaluate Econ Ltd, UK. Early background was in software and electronic engineering (University of Manchester) and real time Digital Signal Processing, along with Radio Frequency design. Completed the MSc in Health Economics at the University of York, UK (2009).Currently PhD submission pending in Health Economic Modelling at the University of Liverpool. These roles have mostly involved developing models and evidence based messages for a wide range of disease areas for global value dossiers and HTA submissions to NICE, SMC and CVZ, along with internal decision-making. Working with GSK (vaccines), Sanofi Aventis (Diabetes), Wirral Primary Care Trust (Real world data validation), CHAMPS (weight management interventions) and Shire (biological in a chronic condition).Experience in a vast range of disease areas and population modelling, with a strong educational background in economics, software development, distributed systems and computation, Artificial Intelligence (1st, BSc Economics and Computer Science, UoL). Applying these skills to develop evidence based value arguments for Health Technology Assessment. This training, education and experience provide the means to apply the world’s most advanced techniques to solve complex problems in a methodical, transparent and comprehensible way, with a core focus on knowledge transfer. Mark enjoys a wide range of water, snow and motor sports.

Tanja Novakovic

Tanja Novakovic MSc Pharm is the president of the Pharmacoeconomics Section within the Pharmaceutical Association of Serbia (2006-to date). She is a founder of the ISPOR Serbian chapter and between 2007 and 2009 its vice president. Since 2001 she has been working in Galenika a.d., a pharmaceutical company, as a product manager for drugs for the central nervous system. Tanja Novakovic is a graduate of the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Pharmacy finishing her postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy at Ghent University in Belgium. She is the author of the “Handbook for pharmacoeconomic evaluations”, the first such publication in the field of pharmacoeconomics in the Serbian language. Through the Pharmacoeconomics Section she is constantly increasing awareness of health economics, pharmacoeconomics and the importance of Health Technology Assessment. She is active in shaping healthcare policy, writing the first Guidelines for pharmacoeconomic evaluations for Serbia. She was also co-author in one of the three HTA reports first completed in Serbia, and was engaged to lead a group of experts to define all existing elements of basic benefit package in Serbia within the World Bank/Ministry of Health of Serbia projects. Tanja has organized and presented in many national meetings and international conferences which have resulted in international cooperation in education and the developing of pharmacoeconomics and HTA in Serbia.

Dávid Dankó

Dávid Dankó is managing director of Ideas & Solutions, a strategic advisory firm which works together with leading pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers on making new medicines accessible for patients, as well as local portfolio strategies and patient adherence management. Dávid received his MSc degree in Economics at Corvinus in 2003, and a PhD degree in 2012 with his thesis on long-term resource management in the pharmaceutical industry. He has been the co-editor of a comprehensive textbook on reimbursement policy. Between 2003 and 2008, he worked as a consultant specialized in health care and life sciences, working with local and multinational companies as well as the Hungarian government. His consulting and expert assignments were mainly focused on health care reform, strategy formulation and implementation, and business planning. Between 2008 and 2010, he worked on the payer side, as deputy head for the strategy, analysis and integration of the Department of Reimbursement at the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund Administration. There he was primarily responsible for pharmaceutical and medical device reimbursement strategy, concept development, international co-operations, and the co-ordination of IT development as well as research and analysis activities. Dávid Dankó is a lecturer at Vienna School of Clinical Research, Université Lyon 1 (EMAUD), Semmelweis University of Budapest, Eötvös Lorand University, and he a regular speaker at international workshops and conferences on pharmaceutical and medical device reimbursement.

Bojan Trkulja

Bojan Trkulja, director of the Association of Manufacturers of innovative medicines INOVIA in Belgrade, Serbia from 1st December 2010. He was born in 1971 in Belgrade, where he completed his elementary, high school and medical university. After a successful internship and passing the state exam, he worked in the office of F. Hoffmann - La Roche in Belgrade, from December 1999. Over the last 11 years he held a variety of positions, from associate through the Medical Product Manager, Compliance Officer and Market Access Manager. Bojan is happily married.

Brian Godman

Brian works with health authorities and health insurance companies across countries, including over 30 European countries and regions, to progress policies to enhance the quality and efficiency of care for both new and established medicines. This includes developing new models to optimise the managed entry of new medicines including those for oncology and orphan diseases. This builds on a background in consultancy and the pharmaceutical industry. These activities have resulted in over 100 publications in recent years in peer reviewed journals, many of which are listed in Pub Med. Brian will use his combined experiences to debate key issues regarding new cancer medicines and potential ways forward.

Günter Harms

After graduating as a Pharmacist and PhD from the University of Kiel, Germany, Dr Harms moved into a management role within the Institute for Public Health Systems Research; a consulting firm and WHO collaborating centre. His responsibilities included health economics, pharmacoepidemiology and healthcare systems research. In 1996 he joined the pharmaceutical industry working in drug development and regulatory affairs at Ferring GmbH in Germany. In 1999, Dr. Harms moved to a role with Novartis Pharma AG, initially in drug development. He subsequently took on strategic management positions in Novartis global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland and then within the US country organization. Returning from the US, as Director for Novartis Global Public Affairs, Dr. Harms was responsible for a broad portfolio of projects including market access, HTA, healthcare reform and cost containment issues. In 2009 - 2011 as Market Pricing Director for Novartis Pharma Dr. Harms was successively responsible for the implementation of Novartis pricing and reimbursement strategies in CEE, Turkey, Russia and CIS. In 2011 Dr. Harms joined Shire Human Genetic Therapies and currently is Market Access & Public Affairs Director, responsible for Central and Eastern Europe for Shire.

Jovan Mihajlovic

Jovan Mihajlovic, a health economist, is a PhD fellow at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and owner of a consulting company Mihajlović Health Analytics (MiHA). He is a graduated pharmacist completing the PhD thesis “Economic Evaluation ofTargetedCancer Therapies in Serbia“. Jovan has an extensive experience within the pharmaceutical industry where he spent 7 years in the field of sales and marketing. Through MiHA he designed cost-effectiveness and budget impact models, conducted epidemiological/pharmaco-epidemiological studies, systematic reviews and network meta-analyses for academia and the industry in Serbia and the Netherlands. He published several studies in renowned medical journals and was speakerat numerous health economic and oncological professionals’ meetings.

Jakub Adamski

Jakub Adamski, attorney-at-law. He specialises in advising on market access and financing healthcare technologies financed from public funds, in particular on reimbursement of drugs, foodstuffs for particular nutritional uses and medical devices, as well as other healthcare system-related issues. He worked at the Drug Policy and Pharmacy Department for 6 years. As a chief expert he was responsible for inter alia reimbursement under the therapeutic and drug programmes, policy on orphan drugs and international cooperation on reimbursement of drugs. He is a former member of the Orphan Diseases Team (advisory body to the Minister of Health) and the European Union’s Committee of Experts on Rare Diseases. He represented the Minister of Health in EU Council and European Commission working groups and Member States’ networks on drug reimbursement. He is a co-author of several publications on pharmaceutical pricing and healthcare policy.