Conference background
The Conference Partnership Group of Faculty of Public Health, World Health Organization (WHO) World Alliance for Patient Safety, and University College London collaborated to set out the conference approach and content. The conference was supported by the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme for Research and the Portuguese Ministry of Health.
Health research is a major programme area for the European Commission's Directorate for Research. In discussion with the Commission's Directorate for Health and Consumer Protection, in 2006 the Directorate for Research made a Call for Proposals for a conference on patient safety research.
A consortium led by the UK Faculty of Public Health, with University College London and the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety, was successful in the competitive bidding. The conference was held in September 2007 in Porto , within the health programme of the Portuguese EU Presidency.
There has been no previous European conference on patient safety research. The conference brought together researchers, policy-makers and aspiring researchers from local, national and international levels and countries including EU member states, EU neighbouring states as well as developing countries and countries with economies in transition. There were 400 invited participants, from 63 countries.
