Mariano Votta is responsible for EU Affairs at the Italian NGO Cittadinanzattiva and Director of its EU branch “Active Citizenship Network”. Passionate about health & consumer issues, Mariano has 25 years of experience in advocacy, stakeholder engagement, communication, European Public Affairs & EU funded-projects. Mariano holds a Degree in Political Science and two post-graduate master's degrees in European Public Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility. He is also a journalist with more than 50 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. He led the political initiative to launch in 2015 at the EU Parliament the Interest Group "EU Patients' Rights & Cross-Border Healthcare," – now at its third mandate - endorsed by more than 100 organisations across Europe and dozens of Members of the European Parliament. In 2016 Mariano won the Efhre International University Excellence Awards on patients’ rights.

Dr. Bernd Blobel studied Mathematics, Technical Cybernetics and Electronics, Bio-Cybernetics, Physics, Medicine and Informatics at the University of Magdeburg and other universities in the former GDR. He received his PhD in Physics with a neurophysiological study. Furthermore, he performed the Habilitation (qualification as university professor) in Medicine and Informatics. He was Head of the Institute for Biometrics and Medical Informatics at the University of Magdeburg, before he moved as Head of the Health Telematics Project Group to the Institute for Integrated Circuits of the Fraunhofer Society in Erlangen. Thereafter, he acted until his retirement as Head of the German National eHealth Competence Center at the University of Regensburg. He was German Representative to many SDOs such as HL7, ISO, CEN, OMG, SNOMED, etc., also chairing the national mirror groups. He is Fellow of several international academies, and published more than 600 papers and published/edited many books.