Medicine Symposium Research Articles

Proceedings: Sixth International Futures of Aviation Medicine Symposium

In June 2024, leaders in aviation medicine from across the United States, Canada, and Europe met for the sixth Leonardo Helicopters/Association of Critical Care Transport: The Path to High Reliability Futures of Aviation Medicine Symposium in Miami, FL. The symposia, now held every few years, grew from the 2003 Air Medical Leadership Congress: Setting the Healthcare Agenda for the Air Medical Community. The meetings’ goal is to gather leaders to distill, debate, and synthesize the state of the science while identifying, refining, and outlining conditions facilitating favorable evolution in civilian aviation medicine. Structured as thematic panel presentations followed by interactive all-attendee roundtable discussions, the gatherings build and expand an international network of thought leaders and proven doers. Meeting attendees have a common goal—accelerating learning and practice among early and developed systems moving toward a shared worldwide agenda for the future of aviation transport medicine.

Leveraging Donor Populations to Study the Epidemiology and Pathogenesis of Transfusion-Transmitted and Emerging Infectious Diseases

The tragedy of transfusion-associated hepatitis and HIV spurred a decades-long overhaul of the regulatory oversight and practice of blood transfusion. Consequent to improved donor selection, testing, process control, clinical transfusion practice and post-transfusion surveillance, transfusion in the United States and other high-income countries is now a very safe medical procedure. Nonetheless, pathogens continue to emerge and threaten the blood supply, highlighting the need for a proactive approach to blood transfusion safety. Blood donor populations and the global transfusion infrastructure are under-utilized resources for the study of infectious diseases. Blood donors are large, demographically diverse subsets of general populations for whom cross-sectional and longitudinal samples are readily accessible for serological and molecular testing. Blood donor collection networks span diverse geographies, including in low- and middle-income countries, where agents, especially zoonotic pathogens, are able to emerge and spread, given limited tools for recognition, surveillance and control. Routine laboratory storage and transportation, coupled with data capture, afford access to rich epidemiological data to assess the epidemiology and pathogenesis of established and emerging infections. Subsequent to the State of the Science in Transfusion Medicine symposium in 2022, our working group (WG), “Emerging Infections: Impact on Blood Science, the Blood Supply, Blood Safety, and Public Health” elected to focus on “leveraging donor populations to study the epidemiology and pathogenesis of transfusion-transmitted and emerging infectious diseases.” The 5 landmark studies span (1) the implication of hepatitis C virus in post-transfusion hepatitis, (2) longitudinal evaluation of plasma donors with incident infections, thus informing the development of a widely used staging system for acute HIV infection, (3) explication of the dynamics of early West Nile Virus infection, (4) the deployment of combined molecular and serological donor screening for Babesia microti, to characterize its epidemiology and infectivity and facilitate routine donor screening, and (5) national serosurveillance for SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The studies highlight the interplay between infectious diseases and transfusion medicine, including the imperative to ensure blood transfusion safety and the broader application of blood donor populations to the study of infectious diseases.

Advancing Understandings of Blood Donation Motivation and Behavior

In this review, we provide critical analysis of social science research into blood donation motivation and behavior. We first share an understanding of the existing literature and recommendations for future research collectively developed by members of the Working Group on Blood Donors and the Supply: Diversifying while Maintaining the Donor Pool, Donor Selection, and Optimizing Blood Availability and Safety, as part of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's 2022 State of the Science in Transfusion Medicine symposium. Then, rather than aim for a comprehensive treatment, we review 4 newer manuscripts that exemplify aspects of the group's recommendations and report results from countries where the blood supply is based on voluntary, nonremunerated donations. From the substantial existing literature, we selected: (1) a study that employed motivational interviewing techniques, thematic analysis, and surveys to link donation motivations and barriers reported by diverse young donors in the United States to actual donation behavior over a year of subsequent eligibility; (2) a survey regarding donation motivations and barriers and monetary amounts associated with willingness to participate in whole blood, plasma, or platelet collection; (3) a survey-based assessment of various emotional states reported by donors at 2 time points during donation and the relationship between emotional experience and subsequent vasovagal reactions; and (4) an interpretive discourse analysis of blood collection agency messaging to donors and the public in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We close by noting several challenges posed by the structure of the United States blood system and the current funding environment to conducting rigorous research and translating findings into practice.

Establishment of a Fellowship in Street Medicine.

The American Medical Association recognizes street homelessness as a significant barrier to the provision of high-quality care.1 Traditional medical training provides inadequate preparation for physicians to manage persons experiencing unsheltered homelessness (PEUH). Street medicine is the direct provision of health care and social support to PEUH,2 who experience high barriers to needed care and tend to use acute hospital-based care at high rates.3We established a street medicine fellowship to enable physicians to acquire the requisite clinical and organizational skills to become leaders in improving outcomes in this vulnerable population.The UPMC Mercy Street Medicine Fellowship is the first of its kind. This one-year, one fellow per year program was initiated in 2019 by UPMC Mercy, Pennsylvania. The fellowship accepts applications from physicians who have completed a residency in internal medicine, family medicine, emergency medicine, or psychiatry, and who seek to develop expertise in caring for PEUH while also participating in multidisciplinary care to enable them to serve as future leaders in this field. At the end of the fellowship training a survey is sent to learners.Fellows are instructed in comprehensive management of PEUH. The program uses the “go-to people” approach to health care as promoted by the Street Medicine Institute. Fellows are challenged to set aside the mindset of the “office approach,” which often does not embrace unique social determinants of health, and round 3 to 4 times per week on the streets, on the riverbanks, and in homeless encampments, including general rounds, targeted case management rounds, and specialty rounds (eg, psychiatric, harm reduction, intimate partner violence, etc). They participate in additional outpatient clinics, 3 half days per week, which have been established for PEUH and for those who have transitioned from street homelessness into housing. Fellows maintain this continuity group of patients throughout the fellowship year. Home visits are also conducted for newly placed patients.Fellows apply the concept of “community united” so that changes initiated in one community are spread to others. They utilize multidisciplinary mentors and engage in productive communication with experts in street medicine. They conduct a formal comparative analysis of 2 communities in which street medicine is practiced to further develop insight into improvement opportunities as well as attend the annual International Street Medicine Symposium as a learning activity and for academic presentation as applicable.Fellows are assessed monthly according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's Core Competencies. Fellows also complete a monthly evaluation of their assigned experience. Lastly, fellows are surveyed at the completion of the year (Figure).Our first fellow now carries a university faculty position in another city. She teaches in the outpatient setting and has integrated clinical street work with community initiatives, a street medicine interest group, and a peer outreach group. Our second fellow is practicing emergency medicine in another city and incorporating her skills to improve care in that setting for PEUH.Although our program is young, our graduates have affirmed that formal fellowship training in street medicine is a viable yet heretofore unexplored avenue toward more effectively addressing society's responsibility toward PEUH.

Proceedings of the 2022 NHLBI and OASH state of the science in transfusion medicine symposium.

State of the Science (SoS) meetings are used to define and highlight important unanswered scientific questions. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), Department of Health and Human Services held a virtual SoS in transfusion medicine (TM) symposium. In advance of the symposium, six multidisciplinary working groups (WG) convened to define research priorities in the areas of: blood donors and the supply, optimizing transfusion outcomes for recipients, emerging infections, mechanistic aspects of components and transfusion, new computational methods in transfusion science, and impact of health disparities on donors and recipients. The overall objective was to identify key basic, translational, and clinical research questions that will help to increase and diversify the volunteer donor pool, ensure safe and effective transfusion strategies for recipients, and identify which blood products from which donors best meet the clinical needs of specific recipient populations. On August 29-30, 2022, over 400 researchers, clinicians, industry experts, government officials, community members, and patient advocates discussed the research priorities presented by each WG. Dialogue focused on the five highest priority research areas identified by each WG and included the rationale, proposed methodological approaches, feasibility, and barriers for success. This report summarizes the key ideas and research priorities identified during the NHLBI/OASH SoS in TM symposium. The report highlights major gaps in our current knowledge and provides a road map for TM research.

Meeting report on 14th Jenner Glycobiology and Medicine Symposium: glycobiology in immunology, medicine, and clinical practice.

Meeting report on 14th Jenner Glycobiology and Medicine Symposium: glycobiology in immunology, medicine, and clinical practice.

Perspectives on the current state of Nigeria’s emergency care system among participants of an emergency medicine symposium: a qualitative appraisal

IntroductionEmergency care systems provide timely and relevant care to the acutely ill and injured. Published commentaries have characterised deficiencies in the Nigerian emergency care system and offered potential solutions but...

Integrating old and new complexity measures toward automated seizure detection from long-term video EEG recordings

SummaryAutomated seizure detection in long-term video-EEG recordings is far from being integrated into common clinical practice. Here, we leverage classical and state-of-the-art complexity measures to robustly and automatically detect seizures from scalp recordings. Brain activity is scored through eight features, encompassing traditional time domain and novel measures of recurrence. A binary classification algorithm tailored to treat unbalanced dataset is used to determine whether a time window is ictal or non-ictal from its features. The application of the algorithm on a cohort of ten adult patients with focal refractory epilepsy indicates sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 90%, along with a true alarm rate of 95% and less than four false alarms per day. The proposed approach emphasizes ictal patterns against noisy background without the need of data preprocessing. Finally, we benchmark our approach against previous studies on two publicly available datasets, demonstrating the good performance of our algorithm.

Frontiers in Precision Medicine IV: Artificial Intelligence, Assembling Large Cohorts, and the Population Data Revolution

Large cohort studies and more recently electronic medical records (EMR) are being used to collect massive amounts of genetic information. Implementation of artificial intelligence has become increasingly necessary to interpret this data with the goal of augmenting patient care. While it is impossible to predict what the future holds, policy makers are challenged to create guiding principles and responsibly roll out these new technologies. On March 22, 2019, the University of Utah hosted its fourth annual Precision Medicine Symposium focusing on artificial intelligence, assembling large cohorts, and the population data revolution. The symposium brought together experts in medicine, science, law and ethics to discuss and debate these emerging issues.

Proceedings from the 9th Annual University of Calgary Leaders in Medicine Research Symposium.

On November 3, 2017 the Leaders in Medicine (LIM) program at the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine hosted the 9th Annual Leaders in Medicine (LIM) Symposium. This year's event commemorated 20 years of the LIM program and its dedication to the training of clinician- scientists.

ACS Shanghai chapter cohosts inaugural medicinal chemistry conference

Attendees from across China gathered on Oct. 26–27 for the first medicinal chemistry symposium cosponsored by the American Chemical Society Shanghai International Chemical Sciences Chapter, ACS Medicinal Chemistry Division (MEDI), and the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association (CPA) Medicinal Chemistry Division. Held in a ballroom at the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel, the conference drew 212 registrants from more than 90 companies and universities. The conference theme was “Recent Advances from the Bench to the Clinic.” Conference organizers provided Chinese audience members with headsets to listen to live translations of the talks, which were all given in English. About a quarter of attendees tried the translation service, which was provided in real time by translators who sat in an enclosure in the back of the room. Hugh Zhu, a medicinal chemist at Novartis in Shanghai and chair of the ACS Shanghai chapter, and Amjad Ali, a medicinal chemist at Merck & Co. and

Dentofacial traumatic injuries: A survey of knowledge and attitudes among emergency medicine physicians in Turkey.

Emergency department (ED) visits for dental issues are mostly related to traumatic injuries. The knowledge of ED physicians about the diagnosis and treatment of dentofacial injuries is crucial for prognosis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the attitude and knowledge as well as education and self-confidence levels of emergency medicine physicians in ED regarding the diagnosis and treatment of dentofacial traumatic injuries. A total of 109 emergency medicine physicians participated in the study. Participants were residents and specialists who attended a national emergency medicine symposium held in Turkey. A questionnaire was distributed during the symposium relating to general data about physicians, their attitudes, basic knowledge, and confidence levels which were believed to be indicative of their capabilities in managing of traumatic dental and maxillofacial injuries. The questionnaire was answered by 109 physicians who were general practitioners (11%), emergency medicine residents (56.8%), and emergency medicine specialists (32.2%). The most experienced group of physicians were emergency medicine specialists. Regardless of the physicians' titles, dentofacial trauma knowledge levels of ED physicians were found to be insufficient. Having a dentist in the family (P<0.01), the duration of emergency service experience (P=0.04), and the age of the physicians (P<0.001) were significantly related to the knowledge level. The majority of ED physicians had low knowledge regarding the diagnosis and treatment of dentofacial traumatic injuries. There is a need for education during and after medical training for ED physicians to provide appropriate primary management of dentofacial trauma.

The 2nd Physics and Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry Symposium

PREFACEPhysics is a fundamental natural science, and its applications extend universally. These include the application in diagnostics, treatments, biomedical engineering, and materials science in medicine and dentistry. Biomedical sciences are a set of applied sciences applying portions of natural science or formal science, or both, to develop knowledge, interventions, or technology that are of use in healthcare or public health. Further, physics are incorporated in bioengineering principles and practices that are used in hospitals, industries, and research laboratories.The 1st Physics and Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry Symposium initially started in 2017. Motivated by the encouraging results of and responses to the increasing research in the biomedicine research. The 2nd Physics and Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry Symposium (PTMDS) was held on July 18th, 2018 in The Margo Hotel, Depok, West Java, Indonesia. PTMDS was organized by the Research and Innovation Products Management Office, Universitas Indonesia.

Combining the Love of Art, Science, Business and Medicine to Innovate and Enhance Patient Health. Highlights from the 7th Annual Leaders in Medicine Symposium of the Cummings School of Medicine, Calgary, AB.

The Leader in Medicine (LIM) Program of the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, hosted its 7th Annual LIM Research Symposium on October 30, 2015 and participation grew once again, with a total of six oral and 99 posters presentations! Over 45 of our Faculty members also participated in the symposium. This year's LIM Symposium theme was "Innovations in Medicine" and the invited guest speaker was our own Dr. Breanne Everett (MD/MBA). She completed her residency in plastic surgery at University of Calgary and holds both a medical degree and an MBA from the University of Calgary. In her inspiring talk, entitled "Marrying Business and Medicine: Toe-ing a Fine Line", she described how she dealt with a clinical problem (diabetic foot ulcers), came up with an innovation that optimized patient care, started her own company and delivered her product to market to enhance the health of the community. She clearly illustrated how to complete the full circle, from identifying a clinical problem to developing and providing a solution that both enhances clinical care and patient health as well as reduces health care costs and hospital admissions. The research symposium was an outstanding success and the abstracts are included in companion article in CIM.

Rationales for expanding minority physician representation in the workforce: a scoping review.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a scoping review of the literature and to categorically map a 15-year trajectory of US undergraduate medical education rationales for and approaches to expanding under-represented minority (URM) physician representation in the medical workforce. Further aims were to comparatively examine related justifications and to consider international implications. From 1 June to 31 July 2015, the authors searched the Cochrane Library, ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar for articles published between 2000 and 2015 reporting rationales for and approaches to increasing the numbers of members of URMs in undergraduate medical school. A total of 137 articles were included in the scoping review. Of these, 114 (83%) mentioned workforce diversity and 73 (53%) mentioned concordance. The patient-physician relationship (n = 52, 38%) and service commitment (n = 52, 38%) were the most commonly cited rationales. The most frequently mentioned approaches to increasing minority representation were pipeline programmes (n = 59, 43%), changes in affirmative action laws (n = 32, 23%) and changes in admission policies (n = 29, 21%). This scoping review of the 2000-2015 literature on strategies for and approaches to expanding URM representation in medicine reveals a repetitive, amplifying message of URM physician service commitment to vulnerable populations in medically underserved communities. Such message repetition reinforces policies and practices that might limit the full scope of URM practice, research and leadership opportunities in medicine. Cross-nationally, service commitment and patient-physician concordance benefits admittedly respond to recognised societal need, yet there is an associated risk for instrumentally singling out members of URMs to fulfil that need. The proceedings of a 2001 US Institute of Medicine symposium warned against creating a deterministic expectation that URM physicians provide care to minority populations. Our findings suggest that the expanding emphasis on URM service commitment and patient-physician concordance benefits warrants ongoing scrutiny and, more broadly, represent a cautionary tale of unintended consequences for medical educators globally.

Guidelines for reproducing blast exposures in the laboratory

Discussions at a NATO Health Factors and Medicine Symposium 207 (HFM-SYM-207) revealed the importance of a systematic approach to understanding blast injuries much like the well-established approach used to solve...

2017 Chinese Medicinal Chemistry Symposium——The speakers from School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, PKU

2017 Chinese Medicinal Chemistry Symposium——The speakers from School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, PKU

Performance Psychology in Medicine symposium hosted by London's Air Ambulance

Drawing on parallels from the world of comedy, sports and emergency medicine, Ben Paul reflects on key learnings from the Performance Psychology in Medicine symposium hosted by London's Air Ambulance.

The 1st Physics and Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry Symposium

PrefacePhysics is a fundamental natural science, and its applications extend universally. These includes the application in diagnostics, treatments, biomedical engineering, and materials science in medicine and dentistry. Biomedical sciences are a set of applied sciences applying portions of natural science or formal science, or both, to develop knowledge, interventions, or technology that are of use in healthcare or public health. Further, physics are incorporated in bioengineering principles and practices that are used in hospitals, industries and research laboratories.The 1st Physics and Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry Symposium initially started in 2017. Motivated by the encouraging results of and responses to the increasing research in the biomedicine research. The 1st Physics and Technologies in Medicine and Dentistry Symposium (PTMDS) was held on July 15th-16th, 2017 in The Margo Hotel, Depok, West Java, Indonesia. PTMDS was organized by the Research and Innovation Products Management Office, Universitas Indonesia.This meeting was aimed at providing the needed forum for scientific communication and interaction among distinguished scientists working in the field physics, medicine, dentistry and related fields. In turn, the symposium on the latest research results was presented, showing development in the field and help to chart our future research directions. The range of topics covered by PTMDS includes materials sciences and technology in medicine and dentistry, biophysics and medical physics, instrumentation and measurement, physics in medical and dental diagnostics, physics in medical and dental therapeutics, and interdisciplinary physics. The orginizing committee received 304 papers from various topics, and 154 papers were selected after going through a strict peer review process, and are submitted for publication in a conference proceeding. Last but not least, we would like to thank the organizing committee and the reviewers for their tremendous support.Conference Photographs

The Orthobiologic Institute (TOBI) 7th Annual PRP &amp; Regenerative Medicine Symposium with Cadaver Lab

The Orthobiologic Institute (TOBI) 7th Annual PRP &amp; Regenerative Medicine Symposium with Cadaver Lab