Biographies

Keynote Speakers

Diane Wu, holds an MD from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and an MPH from Harvard University, USA. Diane is board certified in Family Medicine in Canada. She has worked in medicine, public health, and management consulting in China, Laos, Bosnia-Herzegovina, England, Switzerland, Canada, and the United States. She has held research, technical and operational support roles with the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, the University of Toronto, Global Affairs Canada, and for a multinational private sector consulting firm.

She joined the Department of Ageing and Life Course in 2016 and currently supports the management of WHO partnerships, communications and advocacy, and the development of new platforms to support innovation in healthy ageing.

Dr. Nick Goodwin was the co-Founder of IFIC in October 2011 and became its first Chief Executive Officer in March 2013. Nick is also the Editor-in-Chief of IFIC’s open-access and impact rated scientific periodical the International Journal of Integrated Care.

Nick holds a range of research, educational and consultation roles worldwide. These international commitments include several European R&D projects such as the EU FP7 Project INTEGRATE, the Horizon 2020 project SUSTAIN and the ICT-PSP projects SMARTCARE, BEYOND SILOS, and CAREWELL. Nick is an active member of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing B3 Action Group on Integrated Care.

Nick has also been working with the World Health Organisation to support the development of its Global Strategy on People-Centred Integrated Health Services and is on the Expert Advisory Team to WHO Regional Office for Europe’s Framework for Action Towards Coordinated/Integrated Health Services Delivery (CIHSD) leading work related to change management and adoption of integrated care in policy and practice.

Ms Marina Karanikolos is a Research Fellow at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her work mainly involves health systems performance assessment, research on the impact of the financial crisis and austerity on population health, as well as editing Health Systems in Transition (HiT) profiles. Prior to joining the Observatory in 2010, Marina worked for the NHS as a public health intelligence analyst. She obtained a Master in Public Health degree from King’s College London

Willeke van Straalduinen is political scientist and was nurse by profession in mental healthcare. At present she owns the private company Age-friendly Nederland and works as promoter for the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, Action Group D4 Age-friendly Cities, Buildings and Environments. She is also involved in two projects with the municipality of The Hague: Age-friendly The Hague conference early October 2017 and a performance audit on the public services of the city.

Earlier on she worked in Dutch parliament and was involved with health policies of D66 (social liberal political party). She worked as a researcher on health policies and age-friendly environments at the Netherlands Institute for Healthcare Institutions and the Dutch research institute of Applied Sciences TNO

Parallel Session panellists

Oscar Zanutto (1972) is a psychologist of work and organizations. He has been working in ISRAA since 2000, nowadays in charge of quality, ICT and European Projects affairs. Project manager in several Italian national projects for elderly funded by Ministry of internal affairs. His skills are European projects management, organizational service design of care delivery for seniors. Trainer in University Masters programmes for psychologists managed by Padua University and gives.He is author of “La leadership in RSA”, and “La Bussiness Intelligence in RSA” Maggioli Editore (2013).

Anne-Sophie Parent is Secretary General of AGE Platform Europe, an EU network representing directly 40 million people aged 50+ across the EU-28 which she has been leading since 2002. AGE aims to voice and promote the interests of the 190 million inhabitants aged 50+ in the European Union. In January 2016, Mrs. Parent was elected Secretary General of the newly established European Covenant on Demographic Change.

Ms. Parent sits on various advisory committees set up by the European Commission: European Health Policy Forum, European Pensions Forum, the Advisory Board of Assisted Ambient Living Joint Programme, the Societal Advisory Board of the More Years Better Lives Joint programme, the Financial Services Users’ Group, the Steering Group of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. She is also a member of the Euro Retail Payment Board set up by the European Central Bank, of the Expert Group of the EU UN-ECE Active Ageing Index project, and of the Advisory Board of the New Pact for Europe.

Iñaki Bartolome holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Deusto. He worked more than 3 years in Panda Security as Product Manager and after that entered the IT Consulting world in different companies.

In 2011 he founded with other partners the Startup Ideable Solutions (www.ideable.net ) , dedicated to advise and develop technological projects and applications in web and mobile, focusing especially on eHealth solutions.

Ideable has developed the KWIDO (www.kwido.com) platform, focused on the care of dependent and elderly people. It includes Kwido Mementia to offer cognitive stimulation for elderly users using serious games. He is a regular lecturer in the application of technology to the care of the elderly in eHealth events such as Gerontological Atheneum, Medicine 2.0, AAL Forum, MiHealth Forum, Aging Bilbao.

Gian Matteo Apuzzo, PhD in Social Sciences, urban sociologist and EU policies expert, has a long time experience in consultancy, as well as in teaching and researching, in different countries and contexts (Italy, Europe, Latin America, Western Balkans, Cambodia, Middle East), with a skill on social/health care and community development. He has also worked for international organisations such as OECD in cross-border territorial review, IOM in psico-social support for minor migrants, Central European Initiative Secretariat as senior expert on health/social policies and migration. As EU policies and funds expert, he has been working since 1999 in the field of health and social inclusion, and since 2009 as senior researcher and project manager for the Friuli Venezia Giulia regional health system organisations in the topics of integrated care, active and healthy ageing, social inclusion and innovation. He was project manager of different EU funded projects and among coordinators of the Action Group on “Age-friendly environments” of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIPonAHA). He has been Project Coordinator of the SmartCare Project led by the Local Health Authority of Trieste (FVG Region), a CIP ICT-PSP funded project that involved 23 European regions and several end users and stakeholders organizations on the topic of ICT-supported integrated care pathways for older people with chronic diseases.

Katie McWilliame has recently returned to Edinburgh following a three year secondment to the Scottish Government as a key support for newly emerging Integration Authorities and Chief Officer designates across Scotland, as well as developing a key e-learning resource with NES and SSSC partners on person centered Strategic Commissioning.

Prior to that Katie worked across the four Lothian partnerships, with her strategic planning role enabling the development of joint plans for older people across health and social care. It also involved the testing of new ways of working to enhance community services, being a key support of capitalising on opportunities through third and independent sector opportunities, as well as being instrumental in securing the business case for the new purpose built Assessment & Rehabilitation Centre for Older People, the Royal Victoria Building in Edinburg.

Her strategic planning experience at the NHS Board in Lothian was preceded by senior operational management and clinical posts across four sites in Edinburgh delivering services for older people and a four year period in Nottingham providing a foundation for her clinical experience as a nurse.

Katie is the vice chair of the Strategic Planning Network in Scotland, and has worked to bring national and local perspectives on many topics much closer together, in a person centered way. She has done this through key seminars including, obesity, dental plan, Scottish Ambulance Service developments, multi agency resilience and integration.

Katie’s new position in the Edinburgh Health & Social Care Partnership, will draw on her operational and strategic planning experiences, to develop plans to meet the needs of older people going forward, with a key element considering capacity, demand and working with all key partners across the City, to ensure everyone plays a part in improving lives of older citizens.

Anastasios Rentoumis is an experienced Health Services Researcher and Project Manager in Health and Social Care Projects in Greece, the Balkans and Europe. He is currently the Programme Coordinator in Greece for the Catholic Church with respect to the refugee crisis. He is also involved in e-health facilitated integrated care and disease management projects for frail people and those suffering from chronic conditions (SEFAC, UHCE, SmartCare, MIG-Health) as project manager, external evaluator and work package leader. He has published research in renowned scientific journals such as Advances in Therapy, European Journal of Clinical Investigation and International Journal of Menatl Health Systems an is particularly interested in persuasive systems design and changing behaviors for active and healthy ageing.

Anne Berit Rafoss, special adviser in the department for elderly, health and social services, section for ageing and health in the city of Oslo. Responsible for the age-friendly Oslo initiative. Chair of the Urban ageing working group in Eurocities. Recently completed a secondment at the WHO, department Ageing and lifecourse in Geneva. Master of International Business and International Relations. Extensive experience within the field of international health policy development.

Toni Dedeu is Vice-Chair of European Regional and Local Health Authorities (EUREGHA) since April 2017 and previously held the position as Chair of EUREGHA since 2014. Dr Dedeu graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Barcelona. He is specialised in Family Medicine and Urology, and holds various MSc and doctoral qualifications in Health Economics, Primary Health Care, and Healthcare Management from University Pompeu Fabra and University Autonomous of Barcelona, both in Catalonia, Spain and University of Manchester, UK. Dr Dedeu is currently Director of the Agency for Healthcare Quality & Assessment (AQuAS) in Catalonia, Spain. Before joining AQuAS, Dr Dedeu was the Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange of the Digital Health Institute in Scotland. Dr Dedeu has also held the position of Senior Officer and Director of International Affairs of the Ministry of Health of Catalonia, Spain. His main research interests are health systems, integrated care, chronic care, community care, public health, eHealth and health and social care innovation.

Jurgen Scheftlein is policy officer in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety. He is a historian by academic qualification. After his studies of history, German language and literature and political Science in Cologne, he worked for the Federal German Ministry of Development Cooperation. In 1997 he took up a position as a civil servant in the European Commission services. After several years in the Directorate-General for Enterprise, he changed in 2004 to the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers. Within the Unit "Health Determinants", his field of responsibility is mental health and well-being.

Hein Raat, MD, PhD, MBA is professor and expert in patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) to include the patient perspective in health care evaluations. He develops, implements, and evaluates how information technology (E-health) empowers patients and (informal) caregivers. He studies the impact of social factors including migrant status and poverty on health. He is actively engaged in exchanges between research, policy, and practice. He authored circa 175 scientific publications.

Elisa Valía Cotanda is Master in European Studies. She is currently developing her research activity at the Research Institute for Welfare Policies – Polibienestar – of the University of Valencia and focusing on the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies and innovative strategic planning in different fields such as active and healthy aging, sustainability of health and social care systems and integrated care.

Kerstin Seipel works as development manager and physiotherapist, both practical and visionary with strategies for an age friendly environment, injuryprevention measures, research and projects for the elderly in the municipality of Nacka. She also works in several international networks, among others ENSA - European Network of Social Authorities, where she is the coordinator of the thematic elderly working group. She is also a member of Elisan steering committee. Kerstin has also been the coordinator of the EU project "Innocare - modern technological solutions in the home for people over 65 years."

Ms Seipel has developed and produced "Safe Elderly - Safe and secure special housing," a method for injuryprevention, especially fallprevention, for the elderly which is developed within the WHO Safe community movement. Currently she is doing research of the performance of the method at Umea University.

In addition to this, she runs “OPEN” – Own Power and ENergy – fallpreventive training and other efforts to reduce the risk of falling for elderly people living at home

Elena Curtopassi has a 16 experience of work as a Regional Officer. She has been working for the Veneto Region since the opening of the Office in Brussels. She has specialized in Social and Health policies. She is presently supporting the coordination of the ENSA European Network of social Authorities and the ELISAN European Local Inclusion and Social Action network. the ENSA gathers professionals from the local communities working in thematic areas: disability, elderly, youth, child and inclusion policies, the ELISAN brings together elected representatives and has participative status at the Council of Europe. She is also elected member of the Board of the European Covenant on Demographic Change joining the effort for an age-friendly Europe. Among her main tasks, international relations with EU institutions and Regional Authorities, coordination and partnerships in European projects, information, counseling and training.

Tomislav Rukavina (Rijeka, Croatia) was after his university degree in Medicine, employed as a young Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant at the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology (1988.–1996.), Medical Faculty, University of Rijeka. He have finished specialisation in Medical Microbiology and Parasitology in 1993. In 1998 he was elected as Assistant Professor in Microbiology and Parasitology at the Medical Faculty, University of Rijeka. Since 1998 he was employed also as part time employer at the Department of Microbiology, Institute of Public Health of Primorsko-Goranska County in Rijeka, Croatia. From the 2000-2002, and 2011-2014 he performed a duty of the Vice Dean for Business Affairs of the Medical Faculty, University of Rijeka. From 2014 till now I am a Dean of the same Faculty. Between 2000-2010 he held a position of Assistant Director of the Institute of Public Health of Primorsko-Goranska County in Rijeka. During the same period he was also the Head of the Laboratory for Urogenital Infections of the mentioned Institute. In 2007 he became a Head of the Department of Social medicine and Epidemiology, Medical Faculty, University of Rijeka and in 2010 he finished my second specialisation in Epidemiology and was elected as Full Professor at the Medical Faculty in Rijeka. From 2011 till now he perform duty of the Head of the Laboratory for Molecular Diagnostics of the Institute of Public Health in Rijeka.

From the very beginning of my professional career he was involved as Collaborator and Principal Investigator on several research projects conducted at the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology and the Department of Social Medicine and Epidemiology.

He is a member of several national and international professional and scientific associations and in some of them he was elected to be a part of the Management Boards.

Carina Dantas, Director of the Innovation Department at Cáritas Coimbra (Portugal), a non-profit organisation with 90 centres, 1.000 workers and 150 volunteers that supports around 26.000 people/year with social, health, education and pastoral care. It's main intervention areas are; Education; Health; Social Support; Family and Community; Children and Youth at Risk; Elderly; HIV/AIDS; Addiction; Homelessness; Community Intervention; Training; Summer camps and Social Tourism. Aslo she is Caritas project manager of GrowMeUp, an UE funded project under H2020 (robotics for senior citizens 2015/2018) and project Reduz Internal Evaluator (drug use and addiction); besides the Main Coordinator in group D4 – Age-friendly Building, Cities and Environments of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing and Evaluator of the Innovative Practices Repository of the EIP-AHA and Vice-President of the European Covenant on Demographic Change, an organisation that aims to gather local, regional and national authorities as well as other stakeholders in order to cooperate and implement evidence-based solutions to support active and healthy ageing.

Paul McGarry, Strategic Lead, Age-friendly Manchester and Greater Manchester Ageing Hub

Since 2003, Paul has led Manchester’s multi-agency urban ageing partnership, now known as Age-friendly Manchester. The partnership works across public, private and community sectors, and with local residents, to improve the quality of life of Mancunians in mid and later life. The partnership has placed a specific focus on reducing social exclusion experienced by older people living in Manchester’s disadvantaged communities. Manchester City Council is recognised as a forward-thinking local authority and in October 2009 published “A Great Place to Grow Older”, a ten-year strategy to create an ‘age-friendly’ Manchester. In June 2010, Manchester was one of first wave of cities to be admitted into the World Health Organisation’s Global Age-friendly cities and environment programme.

In 2016 Paul was also appointed as the Strategic Lead for the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub, which he worked with partners to set up over the previous twelve months. The Greater Manchester Ageing Hub has an ambition for Greater Manchester to be the first age-friendly city region in the UK, to be a global centre of excellence for ageing, and to increase economic participation among the over-50s. Greater Manchester has recently been announced as the the first strategic place partner to the Centre for Ageing Better. Paul has had a number of journal articles on ageing published, and given presentations to high-profile events in the USA, Japan, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and Spain. Paul has an MA in social gerontology and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, as well as a member of several international research and policy networks. Paul is a member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Network of Ageing Friendly Cities Advisory Group, and the Scientific Steering Board for the joint Age-friendly Environments in Europe project

Arpana Verma, is the Head of the Division of Population Health, Health Services Research and Primary Care. She is Director of Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health (MUCH) a WHO Collaborating Centre and honorary Consultant in Public Health at PHE.

Dr Verma is currently the Programme Director for the Masters in Public Health and MRes in Public Health/Primary Care online distance learning course. She is also the Evaluation Lead for Well North which aims to improve the health of the poorest, fastest, in some of the most deprived areas of the North of England.

Dr Verma was the principle investigator (PI) of the European Urban Health Indicator System project (EURO-URHIS 2) funded by DG Research under the FP7 programme, and is also the president of the European Public Health Association section on Urban Public Health.

Dr Verma is also PI on a number of health service research projects from vaccinations, data linkage for infectious diseases (blood borne viruses and HPV) to global non-communicable diseases. The most recent EU grant consists of investigating health ageing in cities. Dr Verma is also an expert for WHO, which has led to several publications. Dr Verma also runs training events for public health professionals including the 11th International Conference on Urban Health in 2014 and the annual International Festival of Public Health.

Joeri De Ren, is currently a Sales & Business Development Director for one of Belgium's largest companies in care for the elderly. He can present a proven track record in sales, general management, business development and change management. Formerly He built a strong experience as a Supply Chain & Logistics expert in various functions and as project leader. He also worked succesfully as a business consultant gaining extensive experience in project management, change management, transformation consulting, business analysis & reporting. He worked in fashion industry, in chemical industry, in Logistics, in business consultancy and in Healthcare.

Markku Markkula, was elected President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) in February 2015 for a two and a half year term of office. Since joining the CoR in 2010 he has held several influential positions such as the first Vice-Chair of the CoR's EPP Group and Chair of the CoR's EPP Task Force on Europe 2020. He was the CoR's rapporteur in the field of innovation for subjects including: "The digital agenda for Europe", "The role of local and regional authorities in achieving the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy", "Enhancing and focusing EU international cooperation in research and innovation", "Horizon 2020", "Better governance for the single market", "Closing the innovation divide", "Creation of high-tech start-up ecosystems", and "The industrial policy package". He has also been a member of several High Level Expert Groups, such as the EU Smart Specialisation Mirror Group

Chair of the day

Welcome words

Josje van Nes, see herself as an involved and enterprising official of the municipality of Rotterdam. Building bridges between policy and real life. Also useful as moderator, training actor and process supervisor. She takes up every opportunity to contribute to awareness and growth. As a moderator her style is characterized by providing security, clarity, flexibility and a sense of humor.

Marleen Goumans is programme director and applied research professor of Integrated Care for the Elderly at Research Centre Innovations in Care at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. She also works as an innovation advisor at healthcare organisation Laurens. She is closely connected to Intensive Programs Healthy and Active Ageing and Gerontechnology, which are intensive courses developed and taught by a collaboration of European applied science university teachers. Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences coordinates these programs. Marleen Goumans is also involved in the minor programs Science and Leadership, and the minor+ Healthcare: Smarter and Better. Marleen is also a member of the curriculum board of the Speech Therapy course. She is in regular contact with the board of School of Healthcare (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences) and the boards of other educational institutes. Marleen supervises the graduation of bachelor- and honours students of several courses of different institutes. She is also connected to the project Geriatric and Gerontological Nursing

Menno Kok is director of the co-location center of EIT Health in Rotterdam, which serves research institutes and companies in Belgium and The Netherlands. EIT Health is one of the largest healthcare initiatives worldwide. Its goal is to improve the sustainability of healthcare systems, promote healthy living and active ageing and enhance the overall wellbeing of people across Europe. EIT Health is leveraging the expertise of more than 140 leading organizations spanning key areas of healthcare including pharma, med tech, ICT, imaging and diagnostics, and consumer products. EIT Health benefits from some of the world’s leading academic and research organizations, as well as healthcare providers, public authorities and municipalities. EIT Health will purposefully invest in Europe’s brightest entrepreneurial and creative minds to foster the development and commercialization of smart products and service solutions in the health sector, addressing the challenges resulting from demographic change and ageing societies.