He has been working at the European Commission for 16 years now. He came at the invitation of Prof. Mariusz Gujski, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and agreed to share his knowledge, experience and talk about the Commission's activities. During the presentation, Dr. Andrzej Ryś presented the key EU legislative solutions for health care. He started with the directive on patients' rights in cross-border health care. According to him, it marked the beginning of the relationship between the European Union and the health systems in member countries. Other important regulations were later born from this directive. And it still has the potential to be developed.
The next regulations discussed concerned medicines and medical devices - thanks to them, medicines and medical devices appeared on the common market. Dr. Ryś also drew attention to health safety regulations. Among the important areas for the European Commission, he also mentioned digital health, which is just beginning to be built, as well as the tobacco directive and regulations on organ, blood and tissue transplantation.
As for new projects, our guest focused on the European plan "To defeat cancer," which aims to better detect and treat cancer more effectively. Dr. Ryś also presented interesting periodically published reports on health in Europe: State of Health in the EU and Health at a Glance.
There was also the topic of the Covid-19 pandemic and related EU activities. Dr. Ryś mentioned the joint purchase of vaccines and the establishment of a new European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). In the discussion after the lecture, a question was raised about the European Health Union. Dr. Ryś recalled that we first heard about it in the State of the Union Address delivered in 2020 by Ursula von der Leyen. The project is underway and is intended to serve the purpose of enabling all EU countries to prepare for and respond jointly to possible health crises.