Two thousand participants from 68 countries, including 100 speakers – these are the impressive figures for Intelligent Health 2019, which was held on 11 and 12 September in the Congress Center Basel (CCB).
Following its premiere in 2018, the global health summit returned to Basel to focus on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI). The central question was how AI can be used to solve the world’s biggest health problems. The Congress theme fits in with the United Nations’ (UN) sustainable development goals, and the programme highlights included a UN session on “digital health”.
“We chose Basel on account of its reputation as a global centre for the life sciences. The CCB is an ideal venue that meets all our requirements”, said Lucy Rothwell, initiator of the congress and managing director of Inspired Minds, after last year’s congress had come to an end. This year, participant numbers were stepped up considerably from 1600 to 2000.
At the same time as Intelligent Health, Basel Life was also staged at the CCB. This combined event, which unites several different formats, presents Europe’s excellence in the life sciences. With the merger of the former Bio Valley Life Sciences Week and MIPTEC, professional visitors are now able to visit the following five elements at Basel Life:
- EMBO: scientific conference on basic research
- BC2: bioinformatics event focussing on “big data in molecular medicine”
- Innovation Forums: business-oriented forum aimed at transferring science into practice
- MIPTEC: accompanying industry exhibition with more than 60 participating companies
- European Job Fair: a showcase for life sciences companies where they can recruit young, highly-qualified researchers from all over Europe.
The Life Sciences Week and the international specialists present in Basel naturally also constitute an attractive setting for staging other meetings not directly incorporated in the main events. This is the case for the Day One conference which was held on 9 September on the new campus of the FHNW University of Applied Sciences in Muttenz. Under the motto “Shaping the Future of Health”, more than 400 researchers and physicians from various disciplines, together with patients, met up to define new approaches to health research involving digital transformation.
