site.btaBulgaria's Health Ministry Will Continue to Invest in Innovation, Minister Kondeva Says

Bulgaria’s Health Ministry will continue to invest in innovation, caretaker Minister of Health Galya Kondeva said here on Tuesday, addressing participants in Capital’s 11th annual conference on innovations and good practices in the health sector.

In 2024, the Ministry has made considerable investment through capital expenditures for modernization and robotic medicine, Kondeva added, citing the purchase of an intelligent endoscopy module powered by artificial intelligence for the university hospitals Tsaritsa Yoanna in Sofia and Kanev in Ruse. “We have also allocated funding for the purchase of a high-tech 2D and 3D imaging scanner for the Neurosurgical Clinic at Pirogov Hospital and for the latest generation four-arm robotic-assisted surgery system for the Clinic of Urology at Alexandrovska Hospital,” the Minister said. The St. George Hospital in Plovdiv has been planned to receive robotic operating theatre equipment worth more than BGN 16 million.

The introduction of innovations will become a sustainable model for improving prevention, detection, and treatment of a range of diseases, Kondeva said.

Bulgarian Medical Association (BMA) President Nikolay Branzalov, who also took part in the meeting, identified the shortage of healthcare workforce as a major problem. In his words, a very assertive approach should be adopted to address the issue. He recalled that at BMA’s proposal, one percent of the budget of the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) is earmarked for innovation in hospitals.

Nikolay Boltadzhiev, member of the Supervisory Board of the NHIF, emphasized the need for competitive funding in order to foster high-quality practices and innovation.

Placing patients at the centre of the healthcare system should not feel like an idealistic goal because this is where they are supposed to be, said Silvia Velichkova, representative of the patient organizations in NHIF's Supervisory Board.