Souzi Makri has been a patient advocate since 2008 when she was diagnosed with enteropathic spondylarthritis and Fibormyalgia.

Souzi has been trained as a patient research partner by EULAR in 2013 (The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology) and became a EUPATI Fellow in 2015, after following a 14-month course on the research and development of medicines. Since then, she has participated in various research  projects with Academia, Industry and other European consortia as a patient research partner.

Souzi has led two European Organizations as Chair, namely AGORA (Southern European Platform for people with Rheumatic diseases) from 2011-2017, and ENFA (European Network of Fibromyalgia Associations) from 2014-2019.

At present, Souzi is a strategic advisor of EAfPA and also holds the position of Vice- President of the Cyprus League Against Rheumatism. Currently Souzi is the Chair Elect of EULAR-PARE (People with Arthritis and Rheumatism in Europe) and will become Chair in June 2021.

Silviu Popa is a policy and government affairs professional having worked in the biopharmaceutical industry in Brussels for the last 7 years. He currently holds the position of Associate Director for Policy & Government Affairs at Bristol Myers Squibb, supporting Central Eastern Europe, Turkey, Israel and India. Prior to that, he worked at Celgene, first in the EU Government Affairs team between 2015-2018, where he focused particularly on patient access-related policies, including Health Technology Assessment, followed by a role focused on CEE countries and Middle East and Northern Africa. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry, Silviu worked for several years as a political advisor in the European Parliament, mainly to MEP Cristian Busoi from Romania. During this period, a significant part of Silviu’s work focused on healthcare policy and major pieces of EU pharmaceutical legislation, including the last pharmaceutical package, the Clinical Trials Regulation or the Transparency Directive.

Silviu has a good understanding of healthcare and patient access issues in the CEE region and is highly interested in finding ways to accelerate and improve patient access to medical innovation and healthcare in general. Silviu has actively engaged in the EFPIA CEE Task Force for several years and more recently took a leading role in a project focused on healthcare financing in CEE countries.

Silviu grew up in Romania and has a background in political science. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and a Master’s Degree in European Affairs from Sciences Po Paris.

Through her own small consultancy business, Health Connect Partners, Petra Wilson works on a number of EU funded projects digital health projects, including Gravitate Heath, UNICOM and Digital Health Europe as well as the recently published review of GDPR in Healthcare, an in-depth study across all EU Member States.

As well as research project work Petra Wilson acts as EU Programme Director for the Personal Connected Health Alliance (a HIMSS innovation company), through which she supports HIMSS Members engage on EU policy issues in digital health as well as in major EU funded projects such as Gravitate Health and the mHealth Hub. As well as her function in HIMSS, Petra holds a role as senior advisor on health and life sciences at FTI Consulting, for whom she works with a wide number of digital health clients, including Johnson&Johnson, GE Healthcare, Bristol Myers Squib and AXA.

Alongside these roles Petra serves on the WHO’s Digital Health Technical Advisory Group, and in this context is at present active on the Smart Vaccine Certificate “Covid Passport” initiative. She is also a Board Member of the European Association on the Study of Diabetes (EASD).

Petra’s professional experience includes eight years in the European Commission, where she focussed particularly on the use of information society technologies in healthcare; seven years as Senior Director of Connected Health at Cisco, where Petra’s team supported clients in making best use of new communications technologies to drive safer and more efficient access to healthcare. Petra also has deep experience of the health services sector, having worked on both the patient and provider side as CEO of the International Diabetes Federation.

Petra holds a Doctorate in Public Health Law from Oxford University, she has British and Belgian nationality, has lived in Brussels for over 20 years and works in English, German and French.

Hans Dubois is Research Manager in the Social Policies unit at Eurofound. His research areas include healthcare, long-term care, social benefits, retirement, over-indebtedness, and housing and local area quality; it includes a specific focus on access to care services. Before joining Eurofound, he was Assistant Professor at Kozminski University in Warsaw. He completed a PhD at Bocconi University in Milan with a research stay at the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev. Prior to this, Hans worked as Research Officer at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies in Madrid.

Frank E. Rademakers, MD, PhD

Frank Rademakers is former Chief Medical Technology and Innovation Officer at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium.

He was trained as a cardiologist at the University of Antwerp with a keen interest in physiology of the heart and ventricular mechanics. His research in this field uses different imaging modalities, one of them being cardiac magnetic resonance which he introduced in Belgian cardiology. He did his PhD on this topic at Johns Hopkins, MD, USA in 1991.

He moved from Antwerp to Leuven in 1998 where he joined the cardiology department for non-invasive cardiac imaging.

He was always interested and active in representation and management and became CMO of the University Hospitals Leuven in 2005 where he co-organized the first JCI accreditation in Belgium.

He was also responsible for the Pharmacy and IT at UZ Leuven and headed the steering group for GDPR implementation.

He is emeritus since October 2020, still seeing outpatients and involved in research projects, among them several EU Horizon 2020 projects. He is the PI for the international ECHOES consortium, among the last 4 contenders for the British Heart Foundation Big Beat Challenge of 30 million pounds.

Ferdinand Breedveld trained to become a Rheumatologist in Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and Harvard Medical School. His scientific focus is pathophysiology of rheumatoid arthritis and the development of rational treatments. In that field he published many peer reviewed papers in the highest-ranking journals of the field and guided 70 PhD projects. He served as Head of the Department of Rheumatology in the LUMC and CEO of the LUMC. He also served as president of the European League Against Rheumatism. Dr Breedveld is Member of the Dutch Royal Society of Science and honorary member of several scientific organisations. Prof. Breedveld is a Board Member and Vice President of the Federation of European Academies of Medicine (FEAM).

Anna Maria Żakowicz is Deputy Bureau Chief and Director of Programs at AHF (AIDS Healthcare Foundation) Europe in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

In her work, she focuses on implementation of people-centered care approaches in HIV testing, treatment and care and prevention. She is committed to putting into practice concepts of integration, task-shifting, user-driven care and patients’ involvement in co-production of care. She believes that every person should receive loving and caring health services. She works across Europe; Eastern Europe has a special place in her heart.

She serves on the Board of Trustees of AIDSFonds. Equity and access to quality HIV treatment and care were the issues she was addressing while serving as a co-chair of Global Network of People Who Live with HIV (GNP+), Civil Society Forum on HIV (CSF), a chair of European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) and a board member of Medicines Patent Pool (MPP).

Ms Żakowicz has a background in humanities and public health. She received her MA from Silesian University and MIH from University of Copenhagen.