Co-creation session

17/02/2026

From Broadcast to Co-Creation: What the Think Tank Format Made Possible

There is a moment in every serious dialogue when the room changes.

Not because a new slide appears. Not because a keynote ends. But because the format shifts from talking about the future to building it together.

That moment arrived as the Health Data Forum Executive Think Tank moved from the plenary broadcast into the co-creation rooms. And it revealed something that is easy to miss in conventional conferences:

From Broadcast to Co-Creation: Why the Format Matters

What might look like a simple format shift was, in reality, the core value proposition of the Think Tank model.

Plenary sessions create shared understanding.
Co-creation creates shared responsibility.

In a landscape defined by advanced therapies, AI uncertainty, regulatory flux and cross-border data challenges, visibility is not enough. What organisations need is a space where:

Evidence can be stress-tested safely
Commercial realities can be voiced openly
Regulators and innovators can explore trade-offs without reputational risk
and next steps can be shaped before positions harden

This is not about replacing conferences.
It is about complementing them with structured dialogue environments where alignment becomes possible.

For companies navigating high-stakes innovation — whether in advanced therapies, digital health, AI governance or reimbursement models — the difference between broadcasting and co-creating is strategic.

Because the future of health innovation will not be determined only by who speaks loudest.

It will be shaped by those who sit in the room as frameworks are refined, risks are surfaced, and trust is deliberately built.

The broadcast paused.
The alignment accelerated.

And that is precisely the space where sustained facilitation becomes infrastructure — not decoration.

Why the shift mattered

Traditional events often reward expertise that is performed, not exercised. Many are designed for scale, not signal. For visibility, not learning.

This Think Tank was different by design.

As one participant reflected, the value was not only in the speakers but in the directional nature of the dialogue:

"The quality of the dialogue was tremendous… previous conferences I attended were more academically oriented. This one is more about how industry leaders are shaping the world — what direction we're thinking in, what we need to do, and what we're doing next."
— Think Tank participant reflection

That sentence captures an important distinction:

Academic conferences often optimise for knowledge dissemination.
Executive co-creation optimises for decision-readiness.

And that is exactly what advanced therapies, real-world evidence, and data governance now require.

The co-creation principle: fewer rooms, deeper work

As the session moved towards breakout work, the facilitation choice was explicit: reduce fragmentation, increase depth.

Instead of four rooms with thin participation, the Think Tank consolidated into two rooms to preserve "minimum viable critical mass" and enable a safer, more engaged conversation.

Two thematic pathways emerged:

Room A: Foundations of Trust & Data Integrity
Combining trusted research environments with data integrity and governance as a single, coherent challenge.

Room B: From Evidence to Access
Focusing on the real-world path from data and evidence to reimbursement, coverage, and sustainable adoption.

Participants were encouraged to move between rooms in 30-minute blocks—a deliberate design choice to foster cross-pollination rather than siloed expertise.

A "fishbowl" that surfaced the tensions we often avoid

The plenary warm-up before breakouts acted as a fishbowl: a short, open dialogue that exposed the practical tensions everyone knows exist — but rarely names clearly.

In minutes, the Think Tank surfaced a set of themes that would shape the co-creation work:

1) Consent is becoming global — and fragile

Consent is no longer a local formality. In distributed systems, it becomes a geopolitical and time-delayed risk question.

The "harvest now, decrypt later" concern is not theoretical: it changes what consent means when data may be safe today but compromised tomorrow.

2) Patient-mediated exchange as a pragmatic starting point

A practical pathway emerged: focus on use cases where cross-border exchange is immediately meaningful to patients — such as cross-border e-prescriptions or time-critical access during travel and mass gatherings.

This is where trust can become tangible.

3) Data foundations as the route to funding the future

A powerful economic logic was articulated: the value created by strengthening data foundations is not "pure savings" — it is a reallocation engine.

Reduce avoidable inefficiencies (such as repeated tests caused by missing information), and the system creates fiscal space to fund the next tier of innovation — including advanced therapies and AI maturity.

4) The unresolved reality of pharmacovigilance

From a safety perspective, the dialogue surfaced an uncomfortable truth: we still have unsolved challenges in pharmacovigilance even before AI enters the picture.

AI may streamline processes — but it also raises new questions about what data is used to make decisions, and how those decision pathways remain accountable.

The human dimension: new voices, real learning

The Think Tank format also created space for emerging leaders to contribute meaningfully — not as passive listeners, but as participants.

Questions from early-career professionals were not treated as side notes; they became framing questions for the room. One example was the challenge of "legacy data" — paper records, unstructured archives, older systems — and how to integrate them into a future that is increasingly AI-enabled.

The response was both practical and principled:

We cannot design a health system that only serves those "born as of today."
We must make the past usable while making the future as useful as possible.

That dual imperative — optimise the past, maximise the future — belongs at the heart of any data readiness strategy.

Conclusion: Where the Real Work Begins

The transition from plenary broadcast to co-creation was not a logistical detail. It was a signal.

It revealed what the Health Data Forum is intentionally building:

a network that values translation over broadcasting
a method that prioritises safe dialogue and decision-readiness
a movement — Data First, AI Later — that understands trust as the precondition for scale

Because advanced therapies are not waiting for institutional comfort.

They are arriving with extraordinary promise, profound uncertainty, and systemic consequences. And in that environment, performance is not enough. Systems will not thrive because they speak well about innovation — they will thrive because they learn faster, together, across borders.

The Think Tank did not pause the broadcast because the work stopped.
It paused the broadcast because the real work began.

Co-creation is where frameworks meet lived systems.
Where regulation encounters patient journeys.
Where reimbursement models confront biological uncertainty.
Where data governance becomes an operational reality.

It is where the future stops being a slide — and becomes a shared design problem.