After a painful journey of more than 20 hours combined from Singapore to Bangkok to New York, and finally we have arrived in Chicago. The first thing on our mind was to go straight to our hotel to shower and clean up. We then spent the rest of the day sleeping to recharge as well as to adjust for the 13 hours time difference between Singapore and Chicago.
The American Association of Clinical Chemistry Annual Meeting began on the 23rd July at the McCormick Place Convention Center. This conference was attended by clinicians, scientists, laboratory technologists, students and laboratory-related product exhibitors and manufacturers from around the world. This year there were 5 outstanding Plenary sessions, 30 Symposia, many different Short Courses, Interactive Workshops, Meet the Expert sessions and Brown Bag sessions.
The Plenary sessions feature speakers with different perspectives on the future of healthcare. The speakers are recognized leaders from clinical practice, research, business and policy. The Symposia are educational sessions presented by experts actively involved in the field. The educational mode is lecture and rooms are arranged theater style. Short Courses offer intensive treatment of a particular subject and are presented to smaller audiences of approximately 50-100 participants. Interactive Workshops promote active participant involvement in the learning process. Teaching strategies include discussion of problems, case studies, examples, group discussion, debate, learning exercise and Q & A. Brown Bag sessions provide an opportunity for intimate and active exchange among participants and noted experts in the field. Meet the Experts sessions allow a small group of interested colleagues to discuss with Plenary speakers and other invited experts. Last but not least there are the Poster sessions where I presented my research.
The Clinical Lab Expo, which is held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting included more than 600 organisations occupying more than 1600 booths. This is the largest exposition and scientific meeting in the world for clinical laboratory science. It is also the premier marketplace for reviewing new products and services. There are more products in every clinical lab discipline exhibited here than any other conference or expo. There are more than 200 product categories on display and they include automation and robotics, blood gas / electrolytes, bone markers, cancer diagnostics and markers, cardiac diagnostics and markers, cholesterol testing, cytology / histology, DNA / RNA testing, endocrine testing, flow cytometry, genetic testing / genotyping, genomics, proteomics, glucose, hematology, immunoassay, infectious diseases, microbiology, nutrition, osteoporosis, patient self-testing, point-of-care testing, therapeutic drug monitoring / toxicology, thyroid testing, urinalysis and much more.
Attending this conference and expo was definitely an eye-opening experience for us. Although our general conference registration only limited us to the Plenary and Symposia sessions (the other sessions required extra $$ in addition to the general fees), there were many concurrent lectures taking place simultaneously and we had difficulty deciding which to attend. We were glad that the ones we attended were interesting and intellectually stimulating. In addition to the above mentioned different types of events, there were lectures sponsored by major manufacturers which were held as early as 7 am and as late as 630 pm at various designated hotels near the convention center. If you think the multiple events taking place at the same time was rather messy, well, it is. We had much difficulty trying to schedule the talks and events we wanted to attend as well as allowing the appropriate time to find the location.
Well, time passed quickly and the conference came to a close. I am glad to have had the opportunity to attend this huge event and would like to thank SingHealth for the sponsorship.