E-DRUG: Third International Conference for Improving Use of Medicines
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Appropriately used medicines are key to the health and well-being of individuals and to the efficient use of scarce resources in health systems. Between November 14 and 18, 2011, the global medicines community will come together in Antalya, Turkey for the Third International Conference for Improving Use of Medicines (ICIUM 2011). Those who work in the medicines field will remember ICIUM 2011's predecessors in 1997 and 2004 which brought together leading international and national policy makers, program managers, researchers, clinicians and other stakeholders to produce state-of-the-art consensus on interventions to improve use of medicines and recommendations for policy change and for research to fill gaps in knowledge.
This yeare's ICIUM conference will focus on Informed Strategies, Effective Policies, Lasting Solutions. Over 600 experts from over 70 countries will participate and evaluate more than 500 research projects conducted since ICIUM 2004. Based on discussions of the latest evidence, participants will again generate recommendations for policies and programs to improve access to and use of medicines. They will define a new global research agenda that is relevant to current conditions and unfolding developments in global health.
'In a time of unprecedented changes in the worlde's population, enormous economic pressures, and widening gaps in individualse' access to limited resources, we must make sure that all stakeholders in health systems can base their decisions on the best available information,e' Dr. Anita Wagner, Assistant Professor at the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute said. 'With a focus on vulnerable populations in low and middle income countries, the experts coming together for ICIUM 2011 will generate recommendations, based on state-of-the-art evidence, to tackle current and evolving medicines challenges. Like its predecessors, we expect ICIUM 2011 to be another milestone event in global health.'
Opening day keynote presentations will address current challenges and novel opportunities for improving the medicines situations in health systems. In each half-day conference session, internationally renowned experts will discuss cutting-edge topics like the role of the pharmaceutical industry in improving medicines access and use; challenges in financing medicines at the health system and household levels; and system strategies to enable patients with chronic conditions adhere to life-long medicines therapies.
Following each plenary session, participants will evaluate the latest research on interventions to improve medicines use in eight parallel topic track sessions. Track themes are access to medicines; policy, regulation, and governance; economics, financing, and insurance systems; child health; HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis; malaria; and drug resistance. Cross-cutting topics include gender and socioeconomic inequities and the uses of information technology in the medicines field. News from the conference will be shared with the global community throughout the event and summaries will be available on the conference blog (http://icium2011.wordpress.com/).
Webcast: The conference plenary sessions will be webcast at http://www.zboxmedia.com/icium/. The full program schedule can be found here: http://bit.ly/uZPFJg.
Press Briefings: At noon local time daily from Monday November 14th through Friday, November 18th, a press briefing for journalists will take place.
For more information on ICIUM 2011 please visit the online media center: http://bit.ly/sYNRyy.
For any questions, please contact Marie Maroun at icium2011@msh.org.
"Maroun,Marie-Reine" <mmaroun@msh.org>