About our Scientific Programme
Keynote Speakers
Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe
Hans Kluge is a Belgian medical doctor and public health expert with more than 25 years of experience spanning three continents. As of February 1, 2020, he assumed the role of Regional Director for Europe at the World Health Organization, following his nomination in September 2019 by the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. Belgium recommended Dr. Kluge as a candidate for the position in 2019.
Dr. Kluge completed his medical, surgical, and obstetrics qualifications at KU Leuven in 1994. As WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr Kluge introduced a new strategic vision for the WHO European Region, called “United action for better health”. He also initiated the Pan-European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, an independent and interdisciplinary group of leaders convened to rethink policy priorities in the light of pandemics.
Dr Kluge will deliver the Herman Delooz Keynote Lecture on the Current Challenges in Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Michael Schull, CEO at ICES, MSc, MD, FRCPC
Michael Schull is chief executive officer at ICES, and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Schull’s research focuses on health service utilization, quality of care and patient outcomes as they relate to emergency care, and the study of interventions designed to reduce emergency department waiting times. His studies use administrative datasets and linkages with clinical data, and examine the causes and consequences of emergency department overcrowding, variations in patient waiting times and pre-hospital care. He is currently working with other researchers and health system decision-makers to evaluate policy interventions designed to reduce emergency department waiting times, and innovative ways to better integrate healthcare between hospital and community providers. Dr. Schull practices as an emergency medicine specialist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
Dr. Schull will deliver a lecture on “How emergency physicians can use large national, public and administrative databases to improve their clinical practice” at EUSEM 2024.
ao. Univ. Prof. Dr. Harald Herkner, MSc, Medical University of Vienna
Dr. Harald Herkner is an intensive care internal medicine specialist. He has been working clinically in the academic emergency department of the Medical University of Vienna for 30 years. Dr. Herkner studied Medicine in Vienna, Austria, and Epidemiology in London, UK. He has also worked for several years at the European Medicines Agency in the UK.
Dr. Herkner has been part of Cochrane for over 20 years and has led the Cochrane Emergency and Critical Care group based in Denmark since 2018. As a physician-researcher, his scientific interests lie in evidence synthesis and clinical epidemiology in emergency and critical care medicine.
Dr. Miquel Sanchez, Director of the Hospital Clinic Emergency Department (Barcelona). MD, PhD
Miquel Sánchez has been the Director of the Emergency Department of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona since 2010. He holds a postgraduate diploma in Hospital Administration and Leadership of Healthcare Organizations awarded by the “Universitat de Barcelona”. In his different positions, he has shown a high interest in process management and quality initiatives for improving ED performance and quality markers. In 2014, he completed the Lean Practitioner Programme at the Lean Enterprise Institute of Spain and earned a postgraduate diploma in Lean Practitioner from the “Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya”. He led a lean transformation in the Emergency Department that notably improved delays and patient satisfaction.
In 2017, he was designated as coordinator of lean implementation in the Barcelona Hospital Clinic. Until the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Miquel Sanchez had been invited to different lean summits and medical meetings held in Spain and abroad to explain how this lean transformation had taken place and how lean had to be deployed in other healthcare settings.