The WHY behind

The idea of creating a think tank is one that has been cooking for a while. The spark that started it can be traced back to September 2023, when I attended an event called The Future of Health (www.future-of-health.org)organized at EPFL Innovation Park in my home-country, Switzerland.

The event had amazing panelists and speakers, all acknowledging that our current medical and “healthcare”system is outdated, built on treatment of acute conditions. Everyone attending agreed a shift in the way we do healthcare needs to transition towards preventive models. But also, every single speaker outlined how difficult really is to enable prevention.

For example, the CEO of one of the largest health insurance companies in Switzerland said that today, the legislation in place in Switzerland doesn’t incentivize prevention. In other words, if one gets diabetes, the health insurance will cover insulin and medication costs. But diabetes prevention is not covered.

To continue, the CEO of the largest private equity investment firms on the Swiss healthcare sector spoke about their challenges - prevention is not profitable at this stage, so investing in startups or scaleups proposing prevention solutions - is not viable economically.

Healthcare professionals are trained for years and years in medical school, thinking they will serve in the science of medicine, but they find themselves lured in the business of healthcare, where, spending more than 15 minutes with a patient is not covered in the current hospital model.

At the same time, as citizens, we give mandates (through vote, in democratic societies) and money (through taxes), to enable robust public health programs, meant to support a healthy life for us, for as long as possible. 

But legislation is slow to change. Evolving from acute care treatment medicine to chronic conditions and prevention medicine will not happen overnight and it won’t be a one man show either. It requires the voice of everyone’s in the healthcare sector and an environment where challenges and solutions are discussed, not as wishful thinking, but as actionable solutions. These conversations cannot take place without openly discussing finance, business models and politics.

Cerebris aims to be hosting these discussions, bringing to life the uncomfortable and controversial conversations, so they come up to light and get resolved.

And no, the scope is not to turn healthcare into a preventive model at 100%. But if by 2050, 10% of all healthcare expenditure worldwide turns towards prevention, less and less people will become patients with long-life chronic conditions.

#prevention #healthcare #thinktank