The conference will provide a unique opportunity to achieve genuine interdisciplinary work involving clinicians and engineers. The format of the conference will facilitate the exchange of information between individuals with clinical and individuals with technical expertise. Clinicians will be provided up-to-date information about technology relevant to implement Personalized Medicine strategies. Engineers will be given the opportunity to find out what are the major roadblocks toward the improvement of Healthcare via the four selected themes: Healthcare Reform and Health IT Adoption,, Workflow and Health IT, Clinical decision Support Systems and Individualized Medicine, and Improving Outcomes and Quality.
The organizers will provide the public at large with access to the conference material by implementing multiple strategies. First of all, they have set up a blog on the conference website. The blog will provide individuals interested in the conference with the opportunity to shape the conference by posting questions, by proposing discussion topics, and by providing information about their own work. Secondly, all the conference abstracts will be made available to the public at large via an open access initiative that the organizer will implement on the conference website. In other words, abstracts will be posted on the conference website. Finally, they will select contributions among those presented at the conference for the first issue of a new magazine that AMA and IEEE EMBS intend to launch within a year from completion of the conference.
Body of Report The NSF grant supported the Second AMA-IEEE Medical Technology Conference on Healthcare. It was a unique conference insofar as it grouped two big institutions, namely the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers – Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (IEEE-EMBS). By so doing, the conference hence united the two big fields of Medicine and Engineering. It was held in Boston in October 16-18, 2011. The grant award successfully helped offset the travel budget to many attendees as well as related expenses to the conference in order to make it happen. The conference was a success on many levels. Briefly, the salient features were: Attraction of a big number of paper submissions and attendees (only 2nd annual) Cohesive interaction between clinicians and engineers Interactive and effective brainstorming sessions Four taskforces resulted from the conference whose work is still on-going Tremendous feedback from attendees, both clinicians and engineers. It was only the second annual joint conference, and the AMA was delayed logistically in its decision to co-sponsor. Hence, even though the conference advertisement period was shortened, the conference nonetheless attracted approximately 310 attendees, as well as 150 paper submissions of which fewer than 100 were accepted. The conference did not follow a traditional conference format, where papers are orally presented to audiences in addition to poster sessions. Instead, we had organized interactive sessions with the audience that lead to brainstorming sessions attended by clinicians and engineers on possible solution paths to challenges ailing the healthcare field. We also had very few selected papers as oral presentations. In addition, we also had poster sessions – the default format of accepted papers. The conference had originally four themes that were picked by the Program Committee. However, as a result of the brainstorming sessions of the conference attendees, the four themes were substituted by four focus groups each assuming one taskforce. The taskforces that were formed during the conference had slightly different focus than the original themes. Here is a table of the original conference themes and of the resulting focus groups that ensued from the brainstorming sessions. Original Themes --> Focus Groups Healthcare Reform and Health IT Adoption --> Standardization Workflow (clinical and administrative) and Health IT --> Usability and User-centered Design Clinical Decision Support and Individual Medicine --> Evidence-based Guidelines and Practices Improving Outcomes and Quality --> Collaboration between Physicians and Engineers A powerpoint presentation illustrating the four newly formed taskforces (focus groups) was presented at the end of the conference, and sent to all attendees to facilitate ongoing work. Postlude The aim and spirit of this conference were to connect physicians to engineers in order to identify and work on problems that are relevant to Healthcare. The hope was, through the new format of the conference, for these interactions to occur, hence fostering relationships that we had intended to create, for the benefit of Healthcare improvement. I can gladly report that the conference accomplished this task. Four taskforces (focus groups) formed and bi-monthly teleconferences for each focus group ensued. Volunteers (conference attendees) kept meeting beyond the conference and have identified one task per taskforce to continually work on, and to report on it during the 3rd subsequent annual conference. To further increase the impact of this initiative and allowing us to achieve broad impact, AMA and IEEE-EMBS have agreed to launch a new journal whose first issue will be based on contributions gathered at the Conference. This was the first time that AMA and IEEE-EMBS come together for such an initiative. We believe that this was a unique opportunity to create a forum that brought together individuals at the intersection of the medical field and the biomedical engineering field with potential dramatic impact on the reform of the healthcare system. To further stimulate the discussion, we have made abstracts submitted for presentation at the conference (in the poster sessions) available in an open access format via the conference website. Besides, presenters were encouraged to prepare multimedia presentations to be linked to the conference abstracts that were also posted on the conference website in an open access format. The open access approach we have decided to take was totally new to both AMA and IEEE EMBS. We believe that this approach has achieved broader impact of the conference. Thank you A wholehearted thank you to NSF for making such an important conference possible. Sincerely, Nicolas W. Chbat, PhD, Conference Chair, December, 2012
