Dear Participant,
Welcome to the 10th International Conference on Integrated Care.
On behalf of the International Network for Integrated Care (INIC), the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and the co-organisers—the City of Tampere, the University of Tampere and the Pirkanmaa Hospital District—as well as on behalf of the Scientific and Local Organising Committees, we wish you warmly welcome to the 10th International Conference on Integrated Care.
This year the overall theme of the Conference is “All together now: Exploring the Many Faces and Facets of Integrated Care—Recent Developments in Integrated Care in Europe and North America'”. With the title, the Conference organisers have wished to express their firm belief in the importance of benchmarking and learning from others as a way forward to develop integrated care. There is a need to understand the similarities and differences of contexts, models, management and structures for integrated care. For the purpose, international exchange has a pivotal role.
While integrated health and social services may have many forms and integrated care models vary from country to country, there is a common objective: to improve the services to match the clients’ and patients’ individual needs. While the people in need for health and social services are entities, it is not rational to break down responding to their needs according administrative or professional boundaries. The appropriate answer is to integrate.
For the past 10 years, the Annual Conference of the International Network of Integrated Care (INIC) and the International Journal for Integrated Care (IJIC) have given us an excellent opportunity to follow the international development of integrated care. However, both scientific conference and journal are joint ventures. Without readership and audience they are empty and sterile. By definition, conferences and journals are for shearing knowledge experiences and ideas, but the conference organizers and journal editors are just facilitators who try to create a common framework for the conference speakers and participants and journal authors and readers who finalise the task.
Regarding this year’s International Conference on Integrated Care, we hope that we, the Conference Organisers, have managed to create a pleasant and productive framework for you to enjoy your participation in and out of plenaries and workshops and to complete the Conference from your part by shearing your knowledge and experiences and getting new ideas as well as making new contacts.
We wish you inspiring two days at the 10th International Conference on Integrated Care—and we wish you agreeable time in Tampere.
On behalf of the Scientific and Local Organizing Committee of the Conference.