Turkey: healthcare is GREAT week
Published 17 September 2014
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0.1 Summary
“Healthcare is GREAT” brings together Turkish and British decision-makers and companies in Windsor Castle and London. Designed to follow Istanbul’s GREAT Festival of Creativity, the event should open the way to investment and co-operation in Turkey’s multi-billion dollar planned healthcare investment in the coming years.
0.2 Detail
The UK/Turkey “Healthcare is GREAT” week took place in Windsor Castle and London from 1-4 September. Turkish attendees included Prof Dr Eyup Gumus, Under-Secretary at the Health Ministry; his deputy Dr Suayip Birinci; and board members of major Turkish healthcare construction consortia. The UK was represented by Minister for Trade and Investment Lord Livingston; UK Business Ambassador for Healthcare and Life Sciences Lord Kakkar; Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Quality Earl Howe; the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Turkey Lord Janvrin; Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Life Science George Freeman MP; and numerous healthcare, financial and construction companies.
The event took place against the background of plans by the Turkish Government to build 32 or more integrated healthcare campuses, each of up to 3,700 beds, adding around 100,000 beds to existing capacity. The initial planned investment programme is $14m and forms the basis for the Turkey healthcare High Value Opportunity (HVO). Opportunities for UK companies include planning, design, construction, operations, financing and facilities management. The week followed a successful outward mission to Istanbul by 22 UK healthcare companies during the GREAT Festival of Creativity in May.
The week opened with a UK/Turkey Health Seminar at Windsor Castle, focused on private finance and the NHS approach to planning, led by Earl Howe and followed by a reception and dinner hosted by Lord Kakkar. Tuesday featured a round-table discussion between the Turkish health consortia and UK construction companies hosted by Lord Kakkar, followed by a lunch sponsored by the WYG Consultancy Group and attended by Lord Janvrin. We then held a series of B2B meetings between Turkish companies and British suppliers of products and services, followed by a bilateral meeting between Prof Dr Gumus and his team and George Freeman MP. In the evening, companies attended a reception hosted by Lord Livingston. Wednesday saw visits by Turkish delegates to the Francis Crick Institute at St Pancras and to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where the delegation saw innovative instrument sterilisation and tracking at first hand.
Following the initial meetings, the UK and Turkey agreed plans for a follow-up visit in the autumn and for an annual series of bilateral meetings, perhaps to be called “The Florence Nightingale Symposium” to focus on clinical practice; PPP; and hospital management, the first to take place in Istanbul next April. The two sides also discussed setting up language training for around 1,000 Health Ministry medical professionals and top officials. Turkish and British officials and companies said that the event offered many valuable opportunities to discuss co-operation.
0.3 Disclaimer
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