Keynote Speakers
Professor Anthony JORM
Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
University of Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr Alexander NG
President, Tencent Healthcare
Professor CHEN Zhengming
Richard Peto Chair Professor in Epidemiology
Nuffield Department of Population Health
University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Nuffield Department of Population Health
University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Professor Corinne FAIVRE-FINN
Professor of Thoracic Radiation Oncology
Division of Cancer Sciences
The University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Division of Cancer Sciences
The University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Keynote Speaker
Professor Anthony JORM
Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
University of Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
University of Melbourne, Australia
Professor Anthony Jorm is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne and National Health & Medical Research Council Leadership Fellow. His research focuses on building the community’s capacity for prevention and early intervention with mental disorders. He also has expertise on the use of consensus methods in science. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Mental Health & Prevention and co-founder and Director of the not-for-profit organization Mental Health First Aid International. He has been listed in various rankings as one of the world’s most cited researchers in Psychology and Psychiatry. He was recently awarded the prestigious James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award by the Association for Psychological Science.
How to Create a Mentally Healthy Population
Population surveys from many countries have shown that mental disorders have a high prevalence, but many people affected do not receive treatment. Efforts have been made to improve population mental health by reducing this “treatment gap”. However, increasing the availability of pharmacological and psychological treatment has not improved population mental health. Two reasons for this are that treatments are often of inadequate quality (the “quality gap”) and that prevention has been neglected (the “prevention gap”). In the area of prevention, there are a range of programmes that work and have a positive return on investment, which are not being implemented. These include e-health and parenting interventions for prevention of anxiety in young people, interventions to reduce loneliness in older people, exercise and psychological interventions to prevent post-natal depression, and school-based programmes to reduce bullying. However, major benefits will require action on early childhood adversities and other social determinants of mental ill health such as unemployment, poverty, adverse workplace factors, low social connectedness and poor diet. For lower-income countries, efforts to improve indicators of human development are also likely to have a mental health benefit. Some nations are implementing well-being measurement frameworks as a step towards a “well-being economy”, and these will be important for monitoring national progress in creating mentally healthy populations.
Keynote Speaker
Dr Alexander NG
President, Tencent Healthcare
Dr Alexander Ng's personal mission is to support the under-privileged, the under-served and make this world a more equitable place.
Dr Ng is currently leading Tencent Healthcare to support healthcare industry’s digital innovation and transformation. Tencent Healthcare currently connects and smoothens the process of accessing online and offline healthcare services for individuals on Tencent Healthcare mini-programme, and also provides AI and cloud solutions to health agencies, hospitals, medical institutions, and pharmaceutical companies.
Dr Ng serves as an expert on the WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Group and Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Tencent, Dr Ng was the Deputy Director for Health Innovation and Partnership at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company.
Dr Ng is a trained physician from New Zealand where he served as the Chief Resident at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland. He received his medical qualifications from the University of Auckland, a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and Postgraduate Diploma in Health Informatics from the University of Otago.
Dr Ng is currently leading Tencent Healthcare to support healthcare industry’s digital innovation and transformation. Tencent Healthcare currently connects and smoothens the process of accessing online and offline healthcare services for individuals on Tencent Healthcare mini-programme, and also provides AI and cloud solutions to health agencies, hospitals, medical institutions, and pharmaceutical companies.
Dr Ng serves as an expert on the WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Group and Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Tencent, Dr Ng was the Deputy Director for Health Innovation and Partnership at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company.
Dr Ng is a trained physician from New Zealand where he served as the Chief Resident at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland. He received his medical qualifications from the University of Auckland, a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and Postgraduate Diploma in Health Informatics from the University of Otago.
Digital Innovation in Primary Care
As burden of chronic diseases continues to rise, novel scientific discoveries continue to change the paradigm of clinical medicine, the legacy of COVID-19 continues to change how the population views healthcare, the healthcare workforce is under increasing pressure to adapt.
Primary care is often seen as the first line of defense of the healthcare system to absorb this pressure. Instead of being the traditional gatekeeper, primary care needs to be more like the conductor of an orchestra. But in this day and age, this orchestra looks different, behaves differently, and plays to a much more diverse audience who enjoys music differently. If everyone enjoys music differently, how come we expect a one size fit all approach will work for primary care? How can we equip primary care with tools to engage and influence our patients, to keep them healthy, and do this at scale?
This lecture aims to provide a different perspective on how to think about the role of primary care in the age of mobile and AI, what is possible and what is not (yet), and what type of research we should invest in build the digital infrastructure for the future?
Keynote Speaker
Professor CHEN Zhengming
Richard Peto Chair Professor in Epidemiology
Nuffield Department of Population Health
University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Nuffield Department of Population Health
University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Professor Chen Zhengming is an elected Member of Academia Europaea and inaugural Richard Peto Chair Professor in Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. He qualified in medicine at Shanghai Medical University in 1983, followed by further postgraduate training in public Health in China and DPhil in Epidemiology at University of Oxford in 1991. His main research concerns causes, prevention and treatment of major chronic diseases of adults (e.g. IHD, stroke, diabetes, cancer) and development of precision health, using big data and multi-omics approaches. Over the last three decades, he has led several large randomised trials of stroke, heart diseases and certain cancers involving in total >100,000 patients, leading to major changes of international guidelines and clinical practice. In 2003, he initiated, designed and established in collaboration with research institutes in China, and has led ever since as UK PI, the China Kadoorie Biobank of >512,000 adults (www.ckbiobank.org), which will continue for the next 15-20 years. In Oxford he leads a large and expanding multi-disciplinary research team. He has published >640 papers (h-Index: >120; total citations>100,000), with expertise in a range of research areas including epidemiology, proteomics, genomic medicine and clinical trials.
Harnessing the Power of Proteogenomics in Population Biobanks to Advance Precision Health
Despite recent advances, our ability to prevent, predict and treat chronic non-communicable diseases (e.g. IHD, stroke, cancer and diabetes) is still limited. Understanding what causes these diseases in diverse populations with different lifestyles, environments and genetic architectures is essential for disease prevention and the development of “precision health”. Unique opportunities to fulfill these goals are offered by prospective biobank studies in different populations around the world, with detailed characterisation of large numbers of apparently healthy individuals from the general population. In the last decade many large prospective biobank studies (e.g. UKB, CKB, ALL of Us) are being or have been established around the world, with extensive data collected on lifestyle, environmental, and physiological factors and with long-term electronic monitoring of their health status. These exposure and health outcome data are now being complemented by large-scale assays of stored biological samples, including genomics and proteomics. Proteomics offers unique insights into human biology and drug development and the advent of high-throughput affinity-based protein profiling technologies (e.g. aptamer-based SomaScan or antibody-based OLINK platform) now enable cost-effective and high throughput quantification of plasma levels of thousands of different protein markers in biobanks. These, together with genetic data, will enable scientists to make many important discoveries relevant to risk prediction, early diagnosis, drug target identification, and better understanding of disease aetiology, ageing and biology. The talk will highlight recent large-scale applications of proteomics technologies in biobanks and key novel findings relevant for the development of precision health.
Keynote Speaker
Professor Corinne FAIVRE-FINN
Professor of Thoracic Radiation Oncology
Division of Cancer Sciences
The University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Division of Cancer Sciences
The University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Professor Corinne Faivre-Finn is a Professor of Thoracic Radiation Oncology at the University of Manchester and Honorary Consultant Clinical Oncologist. She has numerous professional roles including radiotherapy research lead for Manchester Cancer Research Centre & the Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, Chair of the ESTRO Lung Focus Group and Radiotherapy Chair of the EORTC Lung Group.
She has led numerous trials studying radiotherapy in lung cancer and is an author of international guidelines on the management of patients with lung cancer (ESMO, BTS, EORTC, ESTRO, ERS, ASTRO). In recent years, recognising the limitation of conventional clinical trials, she has developed a keen interest in real word data and pragmatic trials. She leads a programme of research focused on the concept of rapid-learning and an electronic patient reported outcome initiative at her institution.
She was awarded Christie international researcher of the year in 2016, Jim Cox Lectureship Award by IASLC in 2019, ESTRO “Honorary Physicist” award in 2022 and became an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2023.
She has published more than 300 original articles and has an H-index of 71 (06/2024).
She has led numerous trials studying radiotherapy in lung cancer and is an author of international guidelines on the management of patients with lung cancer (ESMO, BTS, EORTC, ESTRO, ERS, ASTRO). In recent years, recognising the limitation of conventional clinical trials, she has developed a keen interest in real word data and pragmatic trials. She leads a programme of research focused on the concept of rapid-learning and an electronic patient reported outcome initiative at her institution.
She was awarded Christie international researcher of the year in 2016, Jim Cox Lectureship Award by IASLC in 2019, ESTRO “Honorary Physicist” award in 2022 and became an NIHR Senior Investigator in 2023.
She has published more than 300 original articles and has an H-index of 71 (06/2024).
Opportunities for High-Quality Real World Research
The increasing interest in Real World Data (RWD) and Real World Evidence (RWE) offers an opportunity to bridge the evidence gaps where clinical trial data is unavailable or difficult to obtain. This keynote lecture will explore the significant advancements in accessing and utilising RWD, spanning local hospital databases, regional care records, national repositories, and internationally collaborative studies enabled by federated learning approaches.
Key topics that will be discussed within the keynote lecture include:
- Definition of RWD and RWE: Understanding the fundamentals and distinctions of RWD and RWE.
- The Need for RWE: Addressing why RWE is crucial in the current healthcare landscape.
- Role of RWE: Highlighting RWE as an alternative to Randomized Controlled Trials in specific scenarios.
- Infrastructure for RWE Research: Identifying the necessary infrastructure to support high-quality RWE research.
- Federated Learning: Exploring how federated learning facilitates international collaboration while maintaining data privacy.
- Christie NHS Foundation Trust's Experience: Sharing practical insights and experiences with RWD at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust.
- Opportunities with High-Quality RWD: Discussing the potential and future opportunities presented by high-quality RWD.
- RAPID-RT Study Exemplar: Showcasing the RAPID-RT study as an exemplary model of successful RWD application.
This lecture aims to illuminate the transformative potential of high-quality RWD and RWE in modern healthcare research, emphasising the practical applications and future opportunities for enhancing evidence-based medical practice.