Prof Dr Péter Gaál has been a member of the Editorial Board of the IME since 2011. Since 2017, he has been the president of the Hungarian Health Management Association, which took over the IME, a scientific periodical of healthcare leaders in 2021, and is the organizer of IME conferences. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Semmelweis University in 1993, obtained a Master of Science in Health Management from the University of London in 1995, and successfully defended his PhD thesis on the phenomenon of gratuity in Hungary in 2004. In 2005, he was awarded the research and publication prize of the European Healthcare Management Association (EHMA) and Karolinska University for his article in English on a novel interpretative framework for informal payment. He is the founding director, lecturer, and researcher of the Department of Health Policy, Financing, and Systems Development at the Health Services Management Training Centre at Semmelweis University. He specializes in health policy, health financing, health systems performance evaluation, and care management.
Dr Eszter Sinkó worked as a trainee at the Ministry of Health after graduating from the University of Economics and then as the head of the Social Yearbook Department at the Centre for Social Institutes. In the autumn of 1988, she joined the Health Secretariat of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, where she prepared a strategic program to reform the health sector. After the regime change, she took on the role of Chief Researcher, providing expertise in implementing the reforms of the time. She later worked as a deputy director at Sedgwick Noble Lowndes. She was a member of the Health Insurance Self-Government for both terms (1993-1997, 1997-1998). In 1995, she was one of the founding members of Semmelweis University’s Health Services Management Training Centre. Currently, she is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Health and Public Administration. She was President of the Management and Health Economics Section of the College of Health Professions from 2011-2016. She is the Vice President of the Hungarian Healthcare Management Association and a member of the Presidential Committee for Health of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Dr Tamás Joó is an associate professor, an expert in data-driven health, and the Hungarian Health Management Association’s vice president. From 2012 to 2014, he worked at the Hungarian State Secretary for Health as an economic analyst, then as a professional leader of an EU project aimed at developing a sectoral management information system, and finally as a personal secretary to the head of the sector. Since 2014, he has been working at the Health Services Management Training Centre at Semmelweis University, initially as a senior health economist and now as an associate professor. He has participated in developing and implementing national and international projects. He works as a researcher, a course leader, educator and government expert in the fields of digital health, data science, artificial intelligence, industrial influencing techniques, health security and cyber defence. As a PhD student, he conducted his studies on innovative data-driven methods to support the evaluation of smoking control measures and research further intervention options. He completed his PhD in 2022. He is a member of AI workgroups for the Ministry of Interior and the National Tax and Customs Administration.