Developing people-centric digital and AI-enabled solutions for respiratory care

Kjeld Hansen was the Chair of the European Lung Foundation 2020-23. He is an experienced patient advocate and has been involved in a wide range of research and advocacy activities to improve care for respiratory patients. Kjeld has moderate to severe asthma. In his professional life, he works at Kristiania University College Oslo, Norway and is also associated with Copenhagen Business School in Fredericksburg, Denmark.

Hilary Pinnock is Professor of Primary Care Respiratory Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She leads programmes of work in the Centre for Applied Respiratory Research, Innovation and Impact (CARRii), the RESPIRE Global Health Research Unit, and the European Respiratory Society Clinical Research Collaboration ‘CONNECT’.

Her research focusses on delivery of care, specifically implementation of supported asthma self-management in routine primary care, and digital health interventions for non-communicable diseases. With colleagues from Bangladesh, India and Malaysia, she is evaluating pulmonary rehabilitation tailored to low resource settings.

Hilary chairs the Education Council of the European Respiratory Society.

Dimitris Kontopidis is Chair of the European Lung Foundation. Dimitris is a cystic fibrosis patient and advocate and has been deeply involved in developing healthcare policy for chronic diseases. Dimitris chose not to have a lung transplant and by doing so brought ‘medicine for all’ to the forefront of Greek politics, helping to save the lives of many people with cystic fibrosis.

ERS President Elect

Dr Dennis Falzon works at the Department for HIV, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis & STI of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. Before joining WHO in 2008 he was a medical epidemiologist at the EuroTB surveillance project in France, and earlier worked in public health in state and non-governmental sectors. Dr Falzon is involved in guidance on TB screening and TB prevention; the integration of digital technologies in support of the End TB Strategy; innovations in TB care and guidance; and evidence gathering and dissemination.

Associate Professor and Respiratory lead of the Medicines Intelligence group at the School of Pharmacy, University of Auckland

David is a paediatric pulmonologist at the University Hospital Necker-Enfants Malades (Paris, France) and associate professor at the Université-Paris Cité. His research focuses on digital health for children with respiratory diseases, and in particular on how continuous home monitoring of these children can lead to timely and personalised care.

Within the European Respiratory Society, David is a core member of the CONNECT clinical research collaboration launched in 2023, and the co-editor of the ERS monograph Digital Respiratory Healthcare released in December 2023.

Dr Mattia Nigro is a doctor at the Respiratory Unit of Humanitas Research Hospital and a PhD Student at Humanitas University in Milan, Italy. His main clinical and research topics include bronchiectasis and acute and chronic respiratory infections. He is an active collaborator of the European Bronchiectasis Registry (EMBARC) and a member of the European Respiratory Society Methodology Network.

Hall Skaara was diagnosed with Idiopathic Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension in 2005. He holds a master’s degree in computer science and previously worked at a large international computer company.

Andrea switched careers from Interior Design to Public Health after she and all three of her children were diagnosed with asthma back in the early 2000’s. A new diagnosis without asthma education led to many emergency visits and hospitalisations for her children and herself. She returned to college to earn a public health degree and is nationally certified in public health and as an asthma educator, founding an asthma programme at her local health department in 2009 and coordinated an award-winning Asthma Home Visit Programme.

Andrea later worked for a national allergy and asthma nonprofit and now runs her own company, Asthma Hub, LLC where she creates evidence-based content for a global allergy and asthma nonprofit.

Saskia Kaltenbrunner researches legal and ethical aspects of innovation and digitalisation processes from an interdisciplinary perspective. She focuses in particular on the use of AI in healthcare, and is involved in several third-party funded projects in the fiels of oncology and post-stroke rehabilitiation. Saskia is additionally writing her PhD in Political Science on digital healthcare policies and practices.

Senior digital health specialist in the clinical informatics service at Hospital Clinic Barcelona, and CEO at Health Circuit.

Vitalii is a Ukranian pulmonologist working in the Department of Propaedeutics of Internal Medicine, National Pirogov Memorial Medical University. His clinical interests are mainly in the field of pulmonary medicine involve treatment, management and rehabilitation of patients with COPD and asthma.

With a strong background in Business Engineering and International Management and experience in building and managing start-ups, Brice is an entrepreneur in MedTech. He is the co-founder and Managing Director of Comunicare Solutions, a digital health company developing platforms that improve communication between patients and healthcare providers and enable remote monitoring and personalised care for people with chronic conditions.

Efthymia is a respiratory physician, currently working as a Clinical Fellow (Hellenic Thoracic Society) at the Department of Respiratory Failure, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, "G. Papanikolaou" General Hospital of Thessaloniki, Greece. As an ERS early-career member, she has been actively involved in projects related to implementation of digital respiratory healthcare in the context of the CONNECT clinical research collaboration. Efthymia is dedicated to patient-centred clinical research, with recent collaboration with patient representatives from the ELF in a patient survey study.

Ed Powell is the chair of the ELF Youth Group and a member of the ELF Council. He has non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis and was diagnosed around eight years after first showing symptoms. Ed is passionate about raising awareness of lung health in young people and has spoken at the EU Parliament in Brussels on the subject.