The International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting improvement in healthcare, will bring its 39th annual conference to COEX, southern Seoul, this year. 

All eyes will be on Korea from Aug. 27-30 as speakers from international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and many other accreditation agencies from 70 member countries, present their views on healthcare quality. 

The conference aims to highlight the work being done by ISQua members and share expertise and knowledge in healthcare quality and safety improvement.

In a video interview with Korea Biomedical Review on Thursday, ISQua President Jeffrey Brathwaite, a professor at Macquarie University in Australia and expert in health systems research, expressed high expectations for the upcoming ISQua conference.

“Korea has been a major partner for ISQua over the years, and we’re excited to bring the conference to Korea. Now Korea will have the opportunity to showcase its sophisticated health systems and set the standard for other countries to benchmark,” Brathwaite said.

‘Korea is a magnet drawing in participants’

Korea has advanced technologies and a far-reaching influence, so it’s exciting to have Korea as a host this year, the ISQua chief said. 

With more than 70 countries and about 1,500 participants expected to attend, Brathwaite expects the Seoul meet to be its biggest conference ever.

“That says a lot about the Korean health system as it’s like a magnet drawing in participants from all over the world,” he said. “We want to use this influence to expand our horizons on the level of quality and safety we can achieve,” he said. 

The conference will focus on technology advances, developing good cultures in healthcare and coproduction in healthcare delivery, looking to the future to see what else might be possible, Brathwaite said while elaborating on the conference theme. The conference is divided into eight tracks, including digital healthcare and innovation, workforce, policy, and governance, coproduction with staff and service users, patient safety and quality improvement, and universal health coverage. 

In this regard, he mentioned that there is also a good meeting of minds between ISQua and Korean health agencies, including the Korean Society for Quality in Health Care (KoSQua), Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA), and the Korea Institute for Healthcare Accreditation (KOIHA), to achieve better coproduction of healthcare as Koreans are naturally very team-oriented. 

The Australian expert is scheduled to lecture on climate change and will open the event with a plenary session alongside former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who Brathwaite says is a role model for him. 

“We are thrilled to have one of our absolute heroes, Ban Ki-moon, gracing the event. I think that's a real highlight, not just the new technologies and health systems that will be on display to improve patient engagement. I am also looking forward to forming new friendships with our Korean colleagues,” he said. 

Responding to unknown healthcare challenges

Brathwaite also mentioned a learning health system as a way to prepare for the next pandemic, and it is a topic that he will be presenting at the conference. 

The system considers the science to ensure evidence-based decisions about health care, provides care in coproduction with patients, and is very strong as a health delivery system to cope with the next healthcare disruption.

He also spoke about being prepared to attend to an influx of new patient groups coming to hospitals because of climate change, another topic that Brathwaite will present.

“The medical community needs to be ready to respond to rising infectious diseases as a result of increased natural disasters and global warming," he said. “We are focused on providing a robust health system in the face of mounting pressures on the health system, such as the increase in chronic diseases arising from super-aging societies.”

He also noted that the healthcare sector has to figure out how to cope with the influx of patients from climate change while simultaneously trying to reduce its carbon footprint.

In light of the new spikes of Covid-19 cases, Brathwaite highlighted the need to be vigilant due to the emergence of new variants.

“We may well have to redouble our efforts to get everyone vaccinated, again, redouble efforts to wear masks, and social distance so the system doesn't become overburdened again,” he explained. “Covid-19 disrupted every health system, including Korea's, but Korea managed the spread of the virus very well.”

He listed Korea’s proactive response as an example of the resilient systems that ISQua is trying to establish worldwide so that patients can access quality medical services even during disruptive periods. 

ISQua focused on expanding its reach and reducing adverse events

Brathwaite has been involved with the ISQua for more than 20 years dating back to delivering presentations very early on at ISQua, to participating on the board and now serving as president.

“There are 36 million papers published in PubMed, but it takes 17 years for 14 percent of evidence to get into practice,” he said.

As a well-published author of several books and papers on health systems improvement, Brathwaite wants to unravel the complexities of improving clinical practice to ensure a better quality of care and patient safety during his term.

“ISQua is a little like the International Standards Organization (ISO) but with a specific focus on health standards and accreditation,” Brathwaite said. “We provide expertise, international networks, fellowship education, accreditation, and conduct other projects on establishing safe healthcare systems in developing and developed countries.”

In particular, he wants the organization to help developing nations by lending regional expertise as these countries require much larger efforts to connect with other countries clinicians, health quality and safety organizations, and health ministries.

ISQua recently formed a task force with the WHO to work on accomplishing goals outlined in a 10-year plan, “Towards eliminating avoidable harm in healthcare.” 

“We’re trying to double our efforts towards having less harm delivered to patients from adverse events such as getting the wrong drug or hospital-acquired infection. While healthcare is mostly safe, there can be lapses in safety with adverse events, and we are trying to eradicate these occurrences continuously,” Brathwaite said.

The ISQua president also mentioned a project arranged with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to tackle climate change and health systems. 

“Specifically, we’re looking at how to measure quality of care and safer care internationally with the 37 countries that make up the OECD,” he said.