This CONNECT University session looks at how digital innovations are helping our brain health, including prevention, diagnosis and treatment. How can we use technology to improve Europe's mental health?

Speakers:

• Schreck Stefan, Head of Unit DG SANTE C1: Health programme and chronic diseases

Title of the presentation: Highways and byways: best travelled roads to digital innovation

Between 1997 and 2008, Stefan has been working in the public health directorate of the European Commission in Luxemburg, in particular in the areas of communicable diseases, health threats, and substances of human origin.

In 2008, he became head of the health unit in the executive agency for health and consumers (EAHC), which was responsible for implementing the EU health programme.

In January 2011, he was appointed head of the health information unit of DG SANCO, dealing mainly with health information policy, and providing the secretariat for the non-food scientific committees of the European Commission. Since February 2016, he is head of the DG SANTE unit 'health programme and chronic diseases'.

• Luca Pani, Full Professor of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena-Italy and Full Professor of Clinical Psychiatry University of Miami, Miami-US, VP for Regulatory Strategy and Market Access Innovation at VeraSci, Durham-USA

Title of the presentation: Regulatory issues on digital technologies in brain drug development

Luca Pani, MD is Professor of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, University of Miami, USA. He is also VP for Regulatory Strategy and Market Access Innovation at VeraSci in Durham, NC. As the former Director General of the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA, 2011-2016) and former member of the Board of Directors, of the Committee for Human Medicines (CHMP) and of the Scientific Advices Working Party (SAWP) for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in London (2010-2017), he is a recognized expert in basic and clinical pharmacology, and regulatory science with particular emphasis on health technology assessments linked with novel negotiation strategies for the reimbursement of precision medicines. In his roles he negotiated the reimbursement for the world first gene therapy (Strimvelis®) and implemented very advanced Managed Entry Agreements linked to regulatory validated registries for real life data follow-up and further evaluations based on bioinformatics. His current interests lie in virtual reality assessment tools to detect early signs of pathological ailments and designing decision tree algorithms to negotiate drug pricing under conditions of uncertainty by using clinical and sensor generated data to continuously populate the unknown variabilities of effectiveness and by linking them to outcome values dynamically recorded in real world evidence.

• Kim Baden-Kristensen, Co-founder & CEO, Brain+

Title of the presentation: How digital tools can improve brain health, and treat and prevent brain disorders

Kim Baden-Kristensen is the Co-founder and CEO of Brain+, an award winning Danish health tech company specializing in digital therapeutics for brain diseases and disorders. 

Kim’s personal mission is to develop digital cures to brain disease.

Kim is a passionate advocate for digital health, and has an active voice in the European health care policy and industry debates. His main expertise is digital therapeutics for cognitive neurorehabilitation and gamified behavioral therapy.

Kim’s has a Master of Science in Economics, Innovation and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School, a degree in Health Care Innovation from Harvard Business School, and has studied Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology at the University of Copenhagen.

Timing: 25 September, 14:00 until 16:00

Background information

This session is part of the CONNECT University Autumn School on Digital Health open for everyone. Check the full programme.

The CONNECT University is an initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate General on Communication Networks, Content and Technologies (DG CONNECT) which aims to inform about the latest digital trends and challenges which are highly linked with EU's relevant policies and serve as a platform for sharing knowledge through thematic discussions, workshops and seminars.