Over 200 leaders in policy, industry, research, innovation and the patient community took part in the inaugural European Brain Economy Summit, co-hosted by NeuroCentury, together with a coalition of 11 other organisations and 40 distinguished speakers taking part. The Summit explored the health economics dimension through the notion of the “brain dividend,” highlighting the significant societal and economic value that brain health can unlock. It featured the launch of the Brain Capital Index for Europe, with a hypothesis that Europe’s lagging productivity performance may be due, at least in part, to suboptimal brain health, not allowing for the strong education and training efforts to be translated into sufficiently strong results in the workplace.

The Summit adopted The Brussels Brain Economy Pledge which includes commitments to:

Raise awareness of the importance of brain health and brain capital as our greatest assets,

Prepare a roadmap of targeted interventions to bend the impact of brain disorders,

Accelerate a paradigm shift in women’s brain health,

Lead a systemic shift in the financing of brain health innovation and adopt the Brain Lens Investing approach,

Support the deployment of the Brain Capital Index,

Develop an Early Intervention Guarantee to achieve step change in early diagnosis and treatment,

Build a Network of Brain-Positive Cities and Organisations,

Develop a Blueprint for Human-Machine Complementarity,

Elaborate the Global Brain Economy Agenda.

We are grateful to Catalight, Roche and Lundbeck for supporting the Summit