As spring graced Copenhagen, we found ourselves at the heart of the ECCMID conference, a global stage where clinical microbiology and infectious disease professionals converge to share their expertise and latest findings.
Arriving at the conference center, one could feel the buzz right away. The excitement of participants attending the world’s premier meeting in the fields of clinical microbiology and infectious diseases was almost tangible. Loud chatter, bright smiles and industry-leading specialists and companies all at the same place were a great start to the 2.5 days of Volpi’s participation in the conference. The hybrid format of the conference, adopted through the recent pandemic, was kept this year, too – online participants were enabled for all who were still unsure about in-person meetings.
As the industry supports the conference through sponsored symposia as well as a large and comprehensive exhibition of laboratory equipment, diagnostic tools and pharmaceutical products, the conference reportedly attracted over 15,000 participants from all over the world, from a variety of functions and levels of seniority. The scientific program spanned the entire range of topics, including the growing amount of use cases of AI in the field of detection and processing and analysis of the data acquired in the field of infectious diseases, among others.
Walking through the laboratory and diagnostics tools exhibition and exchanging with the industry-leading players, we observed the need to move detection closer to the beginning of the patient journey and the continuous need for a high degree of multiplexing. That being said, rapid diagnosis remains the top priority in order to enable fast and effective antibiotic treatment and improve outcomes. The field of clinical microbiology is currently experiencing a significant transformation with the use of “-omics” techniques such as transcriptomics and metabolomics, as well as the optimization of clinical practice configurations to improve patient outcomes in infectious diseases.
Infectious diseases still pose a large challenge to humanity, with research in the field growing at an average rate of 6.9% annually over the last two decades. Even though governmental organizations are leading the way in research, they work closely with large industry players that have market access. Taking that into consideration, we are sure that the ECCMID conference will remain highly interesting for years to come! We look forward to seeing everyone at ECCMID 2024 in Barcelona.
Ivan Milicevic
Key Account Manager