Scientific Programme

This year we aim to follow the long established tradition of putting together an innovative and up to date programme covering the range of subjects that Clinical Biochemists and people associated with the profession need for their day to day practice and to take them into the rather uncertain but exciting future. It is important that delegates are able to take this knowledge back to their hospitals to apply to their everyday practice. Subjects such as Biochemical issues in the Accident and Emergency department, issues related to Calcium Metabolism, Nutrition and Renal Medicine are examples covered in the programme which will enable this to happen.

Information Technology impacts on every aspect of our working life and we have an innovative session on what’s happening nationally and internationally. Issues relating to the quality of the service we provide are well covered by WEQAS and NEQAS and also by the Audit session. The latter will include a lively, not-to-be-missed debate. The more specialist areas of our profession are covered by Inborn Errors of Metabolism in Adults and the ever popular subject of Endocrinology, whilst our Immunology colleagues have put together a cutting edge session on Complement.

In order to attract our ever important “manager” colleagues we have included a management session covering the hot topics of the moment. An innovation on previous years is that there is going to be no charge for this session for those who attend the exhibition.

Finally, I’m sure we were all delighted with the Team GB performance in the Beijing Olympics and to reflect on how important we see the 2012 Olympics in London we have included a session on Sports Biochemistry. We hope this will not only be an interesting session but will provide some guidance on how we as Clinical Biochemists can get involved in issues related to Sport and Health in the future.

Keith Griffiths

Chairman of the Scientific Programme Committee