Innovations Stream at ECR 2014, Setting New Standard for Medical Congresses

The European Congress of Radiology (ECR) 2014, the biggest European radiology meeting, was held March 6-10, 2014, in Vienna, Austria. Over 20,000 delegates from more than 110 countries attended the annual meeting of the European Society of Radiology (ESR; Vienna, Austria), which was held at the Austria Center Vienna. It was also the first time that the congress extended into UN territory, with the Vienna International Center’s M building serving as an annex.

With over 1,800 lectures encompassing all features of medical imaging, the scientific program explored into the latest studies by international experts and handled the current hot topics in radiology. A total of 329 presentations focused on oncologic imaging, 228 on abdominal and gastrointestinal imaging, and many more on many other subspecialties in radiology, as well as physics, nuclear medicine and lectures for radiographers.

Radiation protection was another key theme of the congress as the ESR launched the EuroSafe Imaging campaign, an initiative encouraging appropriateness in medical imaging, maintaining doses within diagnostic reference levels and stressing the as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) principle. “This congress for me is very specific because it’s the first time that the ECR is connected to a political action [...] This campaign is a good summary of all our policy related to radiation protection,” said ESR past-president Prof. Guy Frija, from Paris, France. A website (please see Related Links below), was recently launched. Many activities will follow in 2014, including the development of training material and lists of criteria for safe radiologic scanning, and the organization of radiation protection sessions during subspecialty and national society events. Individuals and organizations are encouraged to become “Friends of EuroSafe Imaging” by signing up with the campaign online.

Another innovation at the congress was the initiation of the multimedia classroom, in which radiologists could directly train their cohorts on several workstations in computed tomography (CT) coronary angiography, CT colonography, and CT imaging in oncology and emergency.

The interactive sessions all were well-liked, and the session “Pitfalls in abdominal imaging” attracted nearly 2,000 delegates, while 1,500 participants attended the Image Interpretation Quiz (IIQ).

A service that allows people to watch lectures online worldwide, ECR Live broadcast more than 1,500 lectures in real time and drew more than 5,500 viewers. Over 4,000 messages, which were posted on Facebook and Twitter and a chat function, were displayed on the Social Media Wall over just five days, confirming the ECR’s leading position in the use of social media at medical congresses. And for the first time, people will be able to view the sessions after the congress.

“ECR Live is now in perfect shape. We’re covering most of the sessions and, what’s most important is that it will now be possible for any member of the society to go through a session from home during and after the congress. It’s a tremendous treasure of knowledge for future radiologists, so I think that the ECR is again setting another standard for the organization of medical congresses,” said ECR 2014 president, Prof. Valentin Sinitsyn.

The next European Congress of Radiology (ECR 2015) will take place in March 2015, again at the Austria Center Vienna.

The ECR is the annual meeting of the ESR, which represents more than 58,000 radiologists worldwide. The ECR is one of the largest medical congresses in the world, attracting more than 20,000 congress participants. Moreover, the congress’s technical exhibition is the largest in Europe.

Related Links:
European Society of Radiology
EuroSafe Imaging campaign