Speakers

Jozef Karaš is the Medical Director at AGEL Merea a.s. He has worked for many years as an anaesthesiologist at the Department of Anaestehsiology and Intensive Care, in the field of emergency medicine, including prehospital emergency medicine.

He has led a district general hospital as managing director and the largest EMS company in Slovakia as medical director and CEO. He is the author and co-author of 4 books in the field of prehospital emergency medicine.

After graduation, Rudolf Zajac worked as a urologist and radiologist at the University Hospital in Bratislava. Later he worked as a director of a commercial company. He entered politics in 2001. From 2002 to 2006 he was Minister of Health of the Slovak Republic. He was instrumental in introducing reform legislation that fundamentally changed the nature of the healthcare system in Slovakia. He was as an advisor to the Minister of Finance of the Czech Republic and currently works in a consulting and trading company, Health Direct Ltd.

Anesthesiologist, intensivist and specialist in emergency medicine. He has 49 years of medical experience. He was the president of the Slovak Society of Anaesthesiology and the Slovak Society of Emergency Medicine. He founded founded the Slovak Society of Pain Management. He has taught at several universities in the Slovak and the Czech Republic. He was a president of the Slovak Red Cross (SČK). Author and co-author of more than 14 university textbooks, monographs and recommendations of professional societies (WHO, EuSEM, SSUMaMK, SKS), more than 200 publications in journals. Since 2006 chief judge of the international competition Rallye Rejvíz. Holder of the highest honours - awarded by the Order of Ľ. Štúr I. class 2022. Currently, an expert guarantor of LSE-Life Star Emergency (EMS provider), the head of the Department of Emergency Medicine of the Medical Faculty of the Slovak Health University, a forensic expert, a first aid instructor.

Head of Demand Responsive Traffic (including PTS) at Public Transport Authority FynBus (DK). Jesper has 28 years of experience in PTS, having worked as Call-center Manager, Operations Controller, Head of Operations, International Operations Analyst and International Operations Excellence Manager at international EMS and PTS provider Falck (22 years), 1 year as an independent international consultant on PTS-management, and 5 years as Head of DRT at FynBus. Jesper has worked in most EU-countries, in the Middle East, in Asia and in Africa.

Christof Constantin Chwojka was born in October 1968 and is called "Costa" by all his friends. After his school years in Langenzersdorf, BG Wien 3 Radetzkystrasse, HTBLuVA Wien 1 Schellinggasse and TGM Wien XX, he started working for the Red Cross while still studying at the University of Vienna.

After extensive stays abroad in Australia and the USA and his work as Managing Director of Internal Services at the Red Cross, he founded his most important workplace to date, "Notruf NÖ", in 2003, which he also managed himself until February 2023. Since August 2023, he has been working for the Björn Steiger Foundation.

For more than 20 years, he has been involved in many projects worldwide for the development of modern structures, modern technologies and more efficiency in the field of public safety and health care, especially in the area of control centres and command & control centres.

Major projects of Notruf NÖ under his leadership are and were certainly the introduction of digital alerting both in the pager network and via ESAPP, as well as the digitalisation of emergency services from the call to the handover in the hospital. The introduction of the telephone health consultation 1450 in 2017, the Acute Community Nurses in 2020, the establishment of the Austrian AED Network and the so-called Rettungslandschaft-NEU in the years 2020 to 2022 with the preceding emergency physician restructuring in 2016 are groundbreaking. The integration and restructuring of the AKUTteam, as well as the negotiations of a state treaty on cross-border rescue services with the neighbouring countries and the corresponding bilateral country agreements also deserve special mention.

He is a key member of numerous boards, committees and organisations, and since 2018 he has also been the Chair of the Accreditation Council of the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch. He has received numerous awards, including the Grand Decoration of Honour for services to his home province of Lower Austria.

In the course of the pandemic, he and his team organised the logistical and technical handling of more than 12 million rapid antigen tests and almost 8 million self-tests. In December 2020, he was appointed vaccination coordinator for the province of Lower Austria by the provincial government and was thus responsible for organising more than four million COVID vaccinations.

Costa is an active emergency paramedic and also a fire brigade commander in his home town. He was the first European to receive IAED certification in all three emergency call disciplines (fire, police and rescue).

Living and residing in the countryside, he passed the skilled worker exam for agriculture at the Agricultural College in Tulln with excellent results in May 2019.

For his activities and commitment, he received numerous awards and medals of merit from the fire brigade, the Red Cross and cities and municipalities. In June 2022, he received the "Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Province of Lower Austria" and in November 2022, in the Austrian Parliament, he received the "Camillo Award for Lifetime Achievement".

Christof Constantin Chwojka sa narodil v októbri 1968 a všetci jeho priatelia ho volajú Costa. Po školských rokoch v Langenzersdorfe, BG Wien 3 Radetzkystrasse, HTBLuVA Wien 1 Schellinggasse a TGM Wien XX začal pracovať pre Červený kríž ešte počas štúdia na Viedenskej univerzite.

Sophia is a multicultural individual with a passion for emergency management and healthcare. As a teenager, she spent four years living in China before moving to Canada, where she completed her bachelor’s degree in Disaster and Emergency Management. Upon returning to her home country of Austria she began training to become a paramedic for the Austrian Red Cross and simultaneously continued her education by earning a Master of Science in Emergency Healthcare Management. Afterwards she began her career at Notruf NÖ in 2015 as a Calltaker, where she quickly rose through the ranks to be a Dispatcher and part of the Quality Management team before moving on to become the vice head of a new department: Channelmanagement.

In her current role, Sophia is committed to utilizing her skills and experience to make a positive impact in the emergency management and healthcare industry.

Marian Faktor completed his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of the Comenius University in Bratislava (1990-1996) and studies at the Faculty of Law of the Pan-European University of Law in Bratislava (2005-2010). In years from 1996 to 2010, he worked as a doctor at the department of gynecology and obstetrics and at the department of trauma and   surgery in a Čadca Hospital. From 2004 he was the head of the service office and then the head of the health education department of the Regional Public Health Office in Čadca. From September 2010 to April 2012, he was the Chairmen of the board of directors and managing director of the General Health Insurance Company. Since July 2010, he has been working as the head of the service office at the Ministry of Health.

Marian Faktor also worked as a project manager of the Dôvera health insurance integration project and Apollo (health insurance companies). He also worked as a member of the working group for the introduction of management information system in Dôvera, as a member of the quality board, the governing body of the system implementation project of quality management STN EN 9001:2001 in the General Health Insurance Company and as a medical examiner at the Office of Labor, Social Affairs and Family in Čadca. He is a member of the Slovak Medical Chamber. He currently works as the director of the Department of Relations with Health Care Providers and as a member of the board of directors of Dôvera Health Insurance Company. He specializes in provider relations, health care, contractual policy, effective cost optimization and legislation.

Marián Hudák is a paramedic who has worked in various positions in the modified and air ambulance services throughout his career. He is one of the founding members and at the same time the first president of the Slovak Chamber of Medical Paramedics. Likewise, he is the co-author of several legislative and educational materials and is also a certified Prehospital Trauma Life Support instructor. He currently holds the position of chief expert of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic for medical rescue.

He has been practicing emergency medicine since 2006 and currently works as an EMS doctor in Rimavska Sobota. He is dedicated to improving the quality of emergency care and implementing innovative practices. He is the author and co-author of several educational materials and professional recommendations. He lectures at professional events in the Slovak and the Czech Republic. He is the organizer of the Central European Congress of Emergency Medicine and Disaster Medicine, and the Polytrauma Congress. He is the President of the Slovak Society of Emergency Medicine and Disaster Medicine, a member of the working group of the Accreditation Commission of the Slovak Ministry of Health, a member of the Categorization Commission of the Slovak Ministry of Health for Emergency Medicine. 

Anesthesiologist, intensivist and emergency medicine specialist. Volodymyr Kizyma has 37 years of medical experience. Since 2010 he has worked in Ukraine, Libya, the Caribbean and Slovakia. He received an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and was the medical director and chief physician of the largest emergency medical service in Slovakia. Currently acts as supervisor for providing of NZS at RZP, a.s. company, like EMS doctor, first aid instructor and ERC member.

Prof. Dariusz Timler is an emergency physician, currently the President of Polish Society for Emergency Medicine. He is a professor at the university, associate dean for Organizational Affairs and Faculty of Emergency Medicine, head of the Department of Emergency Medicine and Disaster Medicine, head of the University Medical Laboratory of Emergency Didactics Medical University of Lodz, Poland. He is engaged in organizational activities, research and education in the field of emergency medicine, the author and coauthor of dozens of scientific publications at home and abroad.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Runggaldier is the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Hamburg Medical School, University of Applied Sciences and Medical University. He is also the Managing Director of Falck in Germany, the largest private provider of EMS in Germany. Klaus is also a paramedic and he works as quality assessor for an international accreditation agency in the health and social sciences. He gives lectures at various national and international universities and is the author of numerous of books and articles in the field of EMS and Primary Health Care.

Peter Jankovič is a teacher at the Faculty of Management and Informatics at Žilina University in Žilina. He serves as a lecturer for courses such as Discrete Simulation, Modeling and Simulation, and Data Structures. In the realm of commerce, he has collaborated extensively on the development of simulation tools, namely Villon and Dante, both aimed at addressing various types of transportation nodes. A notable contribution in his career is the creation of a microscopic agent-based simulation model for emergency medical services. This innovative model has been successfully employed since 2017 to assess potential changes within the Emergency Medical Services system. He is also a co-author of several scientific articles on the topics of EMS.

Since 2006 she has been working in the field of emergency medical services as a paramedic. For thirteen years she worked as the manager of an education and training center and later as the operations manager of the largest provider of emergency medical services in Slovakia. For many years she has worked as a lecturer at the Department of Emergency Health Care at the University of Prešov, where she trains paramedics and students of emergency health care. She creates professional publications for paramedics and participates in the development of professional codes of practice.

Marian Vlasak is Global Fleet Sourcing & Vehicles Construction Manager at Falck’s Denmark Global Procurement department. Marian holds Diploma Degree (MSc.) in Mechanical Engineering and is working in Emergency Medical Services for more than 16 years. His current field of responsibility is tendering, procurement and production of ambulances, fire trucks and roadside assistance vehicles for Falck Group. Within his working career Marian was leading design, development and delivery of more than a thousand tender and legislation compliant ambulances and tens of fire trucks. His recent most important project was design and development of very first scalable electrical ambulance build on Mercedes-Benz e-Vito chassis, which was successfully implemented into EMS operations of Region Hovedstaden (Copenhagen) in Denmark. Marian is expert in special vehicles EU homologation legislation, special vehicles production processes; has basic emergency & firefighting training; successfully completed PRINCE2: Foundation Project Management course and is certified ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System Internal Auditor.

Gaston Ivanov is a data analyst at AGEL Merea. He worked at the Health Policy Institute of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, where, among other things, he worked on hospital stratification and the redistribution mechanism of health care fund. Subsequently, at the EMS Command and Control Centre Slovakia, he worked on the optimization of the EMS network and data centralization, but he was also involved in electronisation of the EMS and construction of EMS stations projects from the Recovery and Resilience Plan. Together with the University of Žilina, he collaborates on publications dealing with the optimal deployment of EMS stations.