In December of 2022, Global Coalition on Aging and Global Heart Hub jointly convened a roundtable of global, multi-disciplinary experts from healthcare, patient advocacy, policy organizations, and the private sector to discuss the challenge of heart valve disease in the context of aging societies and their evolving needs.
This position paper, Heart Valve Disease: Harnessing Innovation to Save Lives, Mitigate Costs, and Advance the Healthy Aging Agenda, is the result of the roundtable discussion and consultation with additional global experts. These experts identified critical issues to address, as well as a need for greater urgency to ensure patients and families, health systems and societies reap the full benefits of innovation, requiring:
- greater awareness globally and across stakeholder disciplines.
- equitable access, reimbursement, and encouragement from health systems for the use of innovations
- the global recognition of heart valve disease as a central element of the Decade of Healthy Ageing.