Association News

Winter Management Workshop – Scientific Programme Details Released

The planned agenda for the forthcoming Management in Radiology (MIR) Winter Course, taking place in Schladming, Austria from 14 – 16 January 2010, has been announced. The intensive workshop is coordinated with assistance from highly experienced leadership trainers from GE Healthcare who have worked with the MIR group over the last two years.

Training Approach

Three half-day sessions will be held with the following focus:

1. Influencing Skills in Healthcare Settings

From regular staff meetings to formal presentations to chance hallway encounters, healthcare leaders need the support of their teams, colleagues, and partners across all levels to successfully drive improvement. This session will focus on influence and persuasion techniques with a mix of theory, discussion and practice on topics including:

• Emotionally intelligent persuasion and interaction styles;

• Limbic messaging;

• Values-driven storytelling and elevator speeches;

• Building networks, and

• Mutual benefit business cases.

2. Working to Your Individual Strengths

Using a self-scored assessment, this session reviews and discusses key identified personal strengths and how you can maximise and develop them further. It also aims to examine strategies for unleashing further strengths and techniques for recognising and harnessing the strengths of your team or organisation.

3. Coaching, Mentoring, and Feedback

This session will introduce key concepts and approaches to these critical practices for leading and maximising team performance. It will explore how to identify and act on feedback opportunities, and provide models and guidelines for successful coaching conversations and mentoring relationships, including how to support other managers in handling difficult feedback situations. With a range of role-playing and interactive activities, participants will have the time to practice these techniques in a safe environment and consider how to apply them to their individual settings.

For more information or to register, please go to www.mir-online.org.

CARS Congress 2010 Announced

The CARS Congress Organising Committee invites you to be par t of their congress which will be held in Geneva, Switzerland from 23 – 26 June, 2010. The congress is aimed at those who work in the fields of radiology, surgery, engineering, informatics and/or healthcare management and have an interest in topics, such as

• Image guided interventions;

• Medical imaging;

• Image processing and visualisation;

• Computer aided diagnosis;

• Surgical simulation;

• Surgical navigation and robotics;

• Model-guided therapy, and

• Personalised medicine.

New PACS applications, including IT infrastructures adapted for surgery as well as related results from the DICOM and IHE working groups are also within the scope of CARS. Recent successful CARS congresses have taken place in Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, London, Chicago, Osaka and Barcelona. The congress will be held in conjunction with the annual meetings of ISCAS, EuroPACS, CAR, CAD and CMI societies. Please note that the deadline for paper and abstract submissions for CARS 2010 in Geneva is January 11, 2010.

Further information is available at: www.cars-int.org

Interventional Oncology Congress Announced: Save the Date!

In order to cater to the growing number of interventionists involved in oncology, the CIRSE Foundation is organising its second European Con ference on Interventional Oncology (ECIO): ECIO 2010 will thus take place on April 21 - 24, 2010 in Florence, Italy. The scientific programme has been further expanded with respect to the 2008 edition, in view of the growing number of novel clinical applications and the many innovative techniques that have been recently introduced. Conference attendees will have the opportunity to choose from several special focus sessions and workshops covering the entire spectrum of oncologic interventions.

Leading experts from around the world will present both wellestablished and new therapies within this exciting and rapidly evolving field. In response to the increasing role of imaging techniques in proper patient selection, tumour targeting and treatment monitoring, the conference will feature newly introduced special sessions focused on advances in cancer imaging.

Further information is available at: www.cirse.org.

ECRI Institute Release Forecast on Lung Cancer Vaccines

In one to three years, new therapeutic vaccines could change standard treatment regimens for the most commonly diagnosed lung cancer - nonsmall cell lung cancer. Therapeutic cancer vaccines (TCVs), currently in late-phase clinical trials, may be introduced as adjuvant therapy that reduces undesirable side effects caused by toxic radiation and chemotherapy, according to a recent Health Technology Forecast released by ECRI Institute®, an independent, nonprofit organisation that researches the best approaches to improving patient care.

The vaccines, which could be considered “personalised medicine,” are designed to stimulate the body’s natural defenses against cancer. By attacking proteins and molecules associated with cancer development, TCVs have the potential to shrink tumours and slow their growth. ECRI Institute reviewed preliminary results from ongoing trials released by four vaccine manufacturers in its repor t, “Therapeutic Vaccines for Lung Cancer©.” If those preliminary results are upheld in ongoing phase III trials and eventually result in approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, ECRI Institute researchers anticipate that TCVs will be widely implemented into lung cancer treatment programmes.

Further information is available at: www.ecri.org

IHE to Showcase at World of Health IT Conference

Creating an interoperable health information architecture enabling access by patients and authorised doctors to patient data at the point of care is a key focus for Europe. Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) plays a major role in facilitating access to and sharing of patient information, thereby enhancing patient safety and eliminating the cost of modifying the connection between each system to share the data. At the World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition, taking place during eHealth week 2010 in Barcelona from 15 - 18 March 2010, the IHE interoperability showcase will demonstrate how IHE-based electronic patient records work in an ambulatory care setting.

IHE is a joint initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively. The benefits for professionals of an easier access to patient-related information are enormous. Healthcare information on a particular patient can be accessed at any moment, no matter whether it was generated in a primary care centre, a hospital or a private physician’s practice.

More information is available at: www.ihe-europe.net.