In the 2016 film 'Hell or High Water,' two brothers rob banks to pay for the treatment of their mother, who died of cancer. Despite the characters' questionable morality, we find ourselves subconsciously rooting for them almost from the outset. We don't condone their actions, but we feel that the right to a dignified life, where healthcare in a critical moment is a fundamental element, is stronger than property rights and the seventh commandment. Participants of Impact'21 will discuss how to improve access to medical care through digitalization on May 12. Global healthcare spending reaches $8 trillion, with $2 trillion spent in Europe and $3.5 trillion in the US, as calculated by the authors of the report Digital Healthcare: patient-first? Proactive, decentralized, personalized, value-based. Even before the pandemic, as much as 35% of all health expenditures went to hospitals. According to a report from Deloitte, expenditures slightly decreased in 2020 – by 1.1% (this is likely due to the limited access to non-hospital treatment from specialist physicians worldwide, to varying degrees). This is merely a temporary pause in costs – expert forecasts suggest they will rise again, by over 5% annually – significantly faster than the global economy is growing today. By 2022, spending is expected to reach $10 trillion, driven by several factors: new, more effective, but increasingly expensive therapeutic solutions, the growing needs of an aging population (Deloitte estimates that by 2023, annual spending on geriatric care, understood as home care, patient health monitoring, etc., will exceed $1.4 trillion), and the rapid development of lifestyle diseases. Katarzyna Kasperska, General Manager of Novo Nordisk in Poland, will discuss improving access to innovative treatments for one of these rapidly spreading global conditions – diabetes – at the May Impact'21. The biggest problem is that increasing healthcare expenditures are not improving access to it. And we all know well that this is not just a problem of American capitalism, as depicted in the film mentioned at the beginning. – Half of the world's population lacks access to healthcare, while 100 million people are driven into poverty due to treatment costs – says Ali Parsa, founder of med-tech company Babylon, in the report “Digital Healthcare: patient-first?”. So, what should be done, how should we act, to ensure that the need to rob a bank that provided high-interest loans for treatment remains solely an American cinematic fiction? Only more effective prevention and more efficient healthcare at the primary care level (family doctors and specialists) will allow for a reduction in the growing costs of treating diseases (before they reach advanced stages). To put it very simply: the more effort we put into prevention, the less money hospitals will need to receive. – Almost 70% of healthcare money goes towards preventable diseases. Early detection of a problem can mean a solution costing $10,000 instead of $4,000 – adds Ali Parsa. According to Prof. Katarzyna Kolasa from Kozminski University, there is only one way to balance and reconcile the needs and capabilities of the system – the rapid digitalization of medical services. – I hope that something positive will emerge from this negative time we are experiencing, that it will be recognized and understood that many solutions that will help us treat more efficiently and faster are within our reach. We don't need to invent them – they already exist, they are refined, tested in many countries – we just need to want to implement them in Poland. It will turn out that many things can be done faster and cheaper, but also more efficiently and safely – Katarzyna Kolasa said in an interview with 300Gospodarka. At the May Impact'21, Prof. Kolasa will present research findings on medical debt, i.e., treatment backlogs for patients in Poland, along with recommendations on how to reduce it as quickly as possible. – We have incurred a huge health debt, and now we need to increase our speed of action tenfold, or perhaps even twentyfold. We just need to be open to innovation. Thanks to telemedicine based on video conferencing, we save time that we can dedicate to better diagnostics and better disease prevention. We could eliminate up to 30% of direct doctor's office visits. In the long term, this leads to tangible financial savings from lower treatment costs. Cancer, detected early, is not only treatable but also cheaper to treat – emphasizes Katarzyna Kolasa. According to Deloitte analysts, a fundamental shift in priorities and decision-making regarding diagnostics and treatment in medicine will occur by 2025. “Following the idea of '4P' (predictive, preventative, personalised, participatory), medicine is to be predictive, preventative, personalized, and participatory. Thanks to the use of the latest technological advancements in big data analytics, genomics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and 5G communication, it will be possible to diagnose faster and tailor it better to individual patient needs, as well as to conduct research and development procedures more efficiently,” write the authors of the already cited Deloitte report titled “The future unmasced. Predicting the future of healthcare and life sciences in 2025”. Deloitte estimates that the global market for virtual medical diagnostic services will grow by 15.5% annually over the next 10 years. In the first and second quarters of 2020 alone, over 1.2 million downloads of various fitness and health monitoring applications occurred worldwide – an increase of over 30% compared to the previous year. The HCIT (Health Information Technology) market, which comprises IT solutions in the healthcare sector, is expected to grow this year to $270.3 billion, up from $227.5 billion in 2020. The telemedicine sector alone will grow globally by almost 20% in just 5 years and will be worth $175.5 billion in 2025. Analysts estimate that there will be 1 billion virtual patient-doctor meetings in the US alone. McKinsey, on the other hand, values the digital healthcare market as a whole at $350 billion, while simultaneously estimating its value to nearly double within the next five years. Such rapid growth, according to analysts, is a result of increasing interest from governments worldwide in improving access to universal medical care and the need to curb rising costs. The opportunity to increase the scope and improve the efficiency of providing such services in Poland will also be one of the discussion topics on May 12. All health sector topics this year will concern the post-pandemic reality in healthcare: Pfizer, co-inventor of the first mRNA vaccine, will discuss business-science collaboration in the development of the pharmaceutical market, and AstraZeneca, celebrating its 30th anniversary in the Polish market, will present itself as an R&D leader in this sector in our country. The agenda also includes:

• New Reality – Lessons Learned from the Pandemic: Accelerating work on drugs and vaccines; global cooperation between scientists, biopharmaceutical companies, and governments.
• Will mRNA-based drugs become a new trend in healthcare?
• How technology can support healthcare: artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, the Internet of Things.
• Is the healthcare system prepared for the needs of an aging society?
• What impact does the stress and psychological disorders experienced during the pandemic have on health?
• Is there common ground between Poland's AI strategy and healthcare?
• Is the Warsaw Health Innovation Hub the beginning of a new era in creating innovations in medicine and the healthcare system in Poland?

Do you notice a lack of coherence between the challenges of modern economics and technological solutions? Navroop Sahdev decided to bridge this gap by founding The Digital Economist. And now she will talk about it during the Impact conference. The Digital Economist is a global organization striving for synergy between modern technologies and humanity's needs. The founder believes that the digital economy can, and even should, focus on people's needs. “The next big tech trend is humanity” is the unofficial motto of The Digital Economist. Navroop believes that modern technologies can help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN to rebuild the damaged environment, reduce social inequalities and poverty, and develop the economy in such a way that humans do not cease to be the subject of these changes. Blockchain is, for Sahdev, the infrastructure technology of the future, but above all, a solution that can help develop actions for positive change in the world. Machine learning is the way to automate many processes, thereby reducing their operating costs. It also allows for early risk identification, and thus mitigation of their potential effects. 3D printing, on the other hand, can facilitate decentralized local production and tailor it to individual needs, which helps reduce waste. Sahdev also deals with the economics of new technologies through Rethink Markets, a global team whose mission is to bridge the gap between theoretical economic issues and their business applications. Through the widely popular online course "Blockchain for Business", co-authored by Navroop, nearly 200,000 entrepreneurs worldwide have already been trained. Together with the world's most respected economists specializing in the digital economy, Sahdev published "Blockchain Economics: Implications of Distributed Ledgers: Markets, Communications Networks, and Algorithmic Reality" in 2019, the first book on blockchain economics. Navroop Sahdev boasts an impressive education. She completed studies in IP management, innovation economics, and applied economics. She also worked at Harvard University. She is currently a fellow at the prestigious MIT Connection Science, part of a select group of top scientists and entrepreneurs in new technologies. We are extremely excited that participants of the spring edition of Impact will have the opportunity to hear from one of the greatest visionaries in the industry. At the May Impact event, Navroop will speak in discussions within two thematic tracks: Digital Future, where she will talk about the latest technological trends, and Blockchain & Digital Assets, introducing participants to the world of complex dependencies and opportunities of distributed ledgers, not only in the realm of cryptocurrencies. What can we expect on the Impact'21 May stage? Since its inception, Impact has organized initiatives that are a phenomenon of the Polish conference market: the traditional format of long panel debates has been replaced by short, dynamic presentations. Impact has also changed its approach to round tables, which are shorter than usual at Impact, and during which very specific topics are discussed in a narrow, closed group. The Impact team also focuses on popular foreign speakers and constantly seeks new technological inspirations.