Collaboration Maastricht and Tomsk
Series of conferences 2014-2019

Since the 1990s, Eastern European societies and their respective health care systems have been undergoing a series of major transformations – some of the changes have worked out successfully, others have had minor positive effects. One of the reasons for lack of progress in the field of health care and the medical innovations is that post-Soviet governance mechanisms are not well attuned to the new realities. We believe that integrating approaches of the social sciences and humanities in medical- and health innovations and to bridge gaps between academics and practitioners is crucial to understand everyday realities in post-Soviet health care.

To stimulate integration of social sciences, humanities and bio-medical fields in Russia, we developed a collaboration between Maastricht University and two universities in Tomsk, Western Siberia, namely Siberian State Medical University and National Research Tomsk State University. Together we organized a series of international conferences Social Sciences and Health Innovations in Tomsk.