Future of Health: Who Pays, Who Cares, What Must Change?

Europe built its healthcare systems on a promise of universal access. Can that promise survive an ageing population, a shrinking workforce and rising demand?

Europe’s promise of accessible, high-quality healthcare is entering a fundamentally different reality. The population consuming the most care is growing faster than the workforce and tax base available to fund and deliver it. In Belgium, people over 65 already account for around half of healthcare spending, while the working-age population is expected to decline. Across Europe, the question is shifting from how do we fund more healthcare? to something harder: how do we redesign healthcare so that it remains sustainable, accessible and trusted?

Europe could face a shortage of close to one million healthcare workers by 2030. In Belgium, only around 2% of health expenditure goes towards prevention, while healthcare professionals still spend significant parts of their day on administration rather than care. Technology can create new capacity, but should we first ask whether we are making the best use of the people and resources we already have?

This raises uncomfortable choices. Who pays when demand rises faster than public resources? Who cares when there are fewer professionals available and more care moves from hospitals into homes? And what must give if we cannot endlessly spend more, hire more or treat more?

At the centre of these questions is the patient. Decisions being made today about access, workforce, technology and funding will shape some of the most important and vulnerable moments of our lives.

Bringing together Lieven Mangelschots, Caroline Franckx, Erik Janssen and Olivier Rousseaux, this conversation will explore the choices Europe can no longer postpone. The evening will be hosted by Scott Russell, TheMerode member and founder of Innatify.

What are we prepared to change to preserve what is most valuable about healthcare, and what must we refuse to lose?

speaker

Director Care & Quality (CQI / CNO), Europe Hospitals. Lieven Mangelschots brings nearly three decades of experience turning ambitions for better healthcare into changes that work inside hospitals. As Director Care & Quality at Europe Hospitals, and previously in quality leadership at UZ Leuven, his work sits at the centre of the pressures facing care delivery: maintaining quality and patient safety, organising scarce clinical capacity, and supporting staff as demand and complexity rises. His experience includes major quality and accreditation programmes and navigating the severe operational pressures of COVID-19 in Brussels. Lieven is also Board Member of the non-profit Healthcare organisation Huis Voor Gezondheid in Brussels. He therefore brings the perspective of someone working directly with the realities of delivering care at scale, and the choices hospitals must make to remain safe, accessible and centred on patients.

speaker

Leading one of Brussels’ largest public hospitals gives Caroline Franckx a direct view of the trade-offs shaping the future of Public healthcare. Since becoming CEO of CHU Brugmann in 2021, she has led the organisation through COVID, workforce challenges, financial pressure and a major programme of transformation. Her responsibility spans access to care, people, infrastructure, innovation and the financial sustainability of a public institution serving patients regardless of circumstance. Caroline has also spoken openly about the risk of a two-tier healthcare system as funding and incentives evolve. She brings a particularly valuable perspective on the central questions of this discussion: who ultimately pays, how universal access can be preserved, and what healthcare systems will have to change when demand continues to outpace available resources.

speaker

VP and Head of Digital Care Transformation, UCB. Erik Janssen focuses on a different challenge: how to redesign care around people living with severe and chronic disease. As VP and Head of Digital Care Transformation at UCB, he works across pharma, digital health, clinicians and healthcare partners to improve how patients are diagnosed, monitored and supported over time. His work addresses the gap between promising technology and effective care by connecting fragmented pathways, supporting earlier diagnosis and monitoring, and embedding digital solutions into clinical practice. Erik consistently argues that technology is valuable only when it solves a real patient or system problem and produces measurable outcomes. His perspective makes him particularly well placed to examine how healthcare can become more continuous, personalised and scalable without losing the human relationship at its centre.

speaker

Olivier Rousseaux brings a view of both what may become possible in healthcare over the next decade and what must happen today for innovation to succeed. He is Director of Venture Development at imec, a global leader in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, applying advanced technologies across areas including diagnostics, sensing, medical devices and life sciences. Olivier works where research must become reality, bringing together scientists, entrepreneurs, industry partners, investors and the strategy required to turn breakthrough technology into companies capable of reaching the market. His perspective is especially relevant as healthcare looks to technology to expand capacity, enable earlier diagnosis and monitoring, and move more care beyond traditional settings. He brings a rigorous view of which innovations could genuinely change healthcare, and what separates scientific promise from solutions that can be financed, adopted and scaled.

moderator

Scott Russell focuses on one of healthcare's central challenges: meeting rising demand when workforce capacity and funding cannot grow at the same pace. As Founder of Innatify, he works closely with hospitals, nursing leaders and frontline teams to understand the root causes of frontline workforce pressure and find effective ways to support staff satisfaction and retention. This includes several years of research across OECD healthcare systems and 700+ interviews, with those insights now informing work with Belgian hospitals. His focus is on designing solutions for healthcare, with healthcare—reducing repetitive and unnecessary administrative work and creating more time and capacity for patient care. He brings a perspective shaped by both research and clinical implementation, with a focus on reducing avoidable workload, making better use of existing capacity and understanding what changes are workable in practice.

Future of Health: Who Pays, Who Cares, What Must Change?

Lieven Mangelschots

Caroline Franckx

Erik Janssen

Olivier Rousseaux

Scott Russell

Become a member

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Future of Health: Who Pays, Who Cares, What Must Change?

Lieven Mangelschots

Caroline Franckx

Erik Janssen

Olivier Rousseaux

Scott Russell

Become a member

Reach us

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