The conference “Patient Safety – Serbia 2025”, dedicated to marking World Patient Safety Day, was held today at Impact Hub Belgrade. This year’s event focused on the youngest patients – babies and children – under the slogan “Safety from the Very Beginning.”
The organizers of this year’s conference were Heliant, Genial, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, and Patient Safety Association of Serbia, while Novartis supported the event as a sponsor.
Safety incidents in early childhood were identified as the ones that could have long-term consequences for health, which was why the goal of the conference was to open discussions on accurate diagnostics, personalized therapy, and the challenges posed by rare diseases.
The program host was Filip Maljković, Head of the Development Team at Heliant, while Anđelka Zečević from the Association of Patient Safety of Serbia gave the opening speech. In the opening lecture, Karol Vinyo, Deputy Director of UNICEF, noted that every child, from birth, had the right to safe and quality healthcare.
The central part of the conference was marked by two panels. The first, titled “Safety from the Very Beginning”, brought together experts in pharmacy, pediatrics, and neurology, who discussed the specificities of caring for children, as well as the risks of medication errors and insufficiently adapted healthcare practices. The panelists were: PhD Aleksandra Buha Đorđević (Faculty of Pharmacy in Belgrade), MD Ivan Milinković (UCCS), MD Gordana Petrović, (Institute for Maternal and Child Health Care of Serbia) and MD Sanja Ostojić (Special Hospital for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Neurology). The moderator of the panel was Anđelka Zečević.
In the second part of the program, attention was drawn to the presentation by MD Nikola Milošević from Bayer and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research and Development of Serbia, who spoke about the application of language technologies in medicine and the opportunities that AI offers for improving patient safety.
The afternoon panel, symbolically titled “Patient Safety on the Journey Through the Unknown”, was dedicated to the treatment of rare diseases. Experts from the fields of medicine, biology, and law, along with representatives of the National Organization for Rare Diseases of Serbia, discussed system shortcomings and how legislative frameworks and social support could help patients and their families. The panelists were: Prof. Dr. Dimitrije Nikolić (Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade), Ass. Prof. Dr. Miloš Brkušanin (Faculty of Biology in Belgrade), Jasna Stojanović (Legal Scanner) and Stefan Živković (National Organization for Rare Diseases of Serbia), while the moderator was Nevena Veljković (Genial).
