This year’s ARCS Annual Conference on putting patients at the centre of healthcare will be held from 6-8 August 2019 at the ICC, Sydney (NSW). The ARCS Annual Conference is a must attend event for professionals from the medtech, biotech and pharmaceutical sectors at all stages of their careers.

This year’s program consists of plenaries and up to seven parallel sessions over three days covering regulatory, clinical research, health economics & reimbursement, medical affairs, leadership and digital health topics. The executive stream caters for senior managers and leaders from the sector.

The central theme of the annual conference will explore barriers and enablers of putting patients at the centre of healthcare. Which trends will enable patients to participate in the decision making and what can the MTP sector do to apply this principle to achieve better patient outcomes? The global trend of democratisation of health data and health information leads to an increase of peer-to-peer medicine (to get information or support from others who have the same health condition), which challenges the medical and healthcare community. With better access to information are healthcare consumers better placed to make decisions about their health? Will they be able to take advantage of significant opportunities such as accelerated recruitment into clinical trials? Will technology and data management achieve better results for clinical trial recruitment and retention? Will it help patients better manage their own health using phone apps and integrated AI? Will it improve pharmacovigilance by putting this in the hands of patients?

Impending changes will challenge current thinking and processes on all levels including regulatory uncertainty about digital technologies, data safety and privacy, increasing health and digital literacy to provide the ability for patients to fully engage and participate in healthcare design and joint decision making.