By Radek Skoda, MD, Department of Biomedicine, University Hosptial Basel, Switzerland
2008-12-07
In celebration of ASH’s 50th, Reflections on ASH is a series of articles that touch on different people’s perspectives on the ASH annual meeting. Dr. Skoda delivered last year’s Ham-Wasserman Lecture on myeloproliferative disorders.
My first contact with ASH was at the 1993 annual meeting in Boston. At that time, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, and it was easy to take two or three days off and attend the conference. I was impressed to find so many people who were interested in clinical hematology and at the same time also interested in molecular aspects of blood disease. Since then, the ASH meeting has grown in size, and the spectrum of topics covered has widened. This is what still fosters the success of the ASH meeting, and of hematology as a discipline at the forefront of biomedical research.
No other meeting brings together hematologists from so many different parts of the world. Size, however, creates its own problems. Only a few conference centers can host the ASH meeting, and the distances between some of the lecture halls can be considerable. Choosing between sessions and making one’s itinerary became a challenge during the years when only the print copy of the abstract book was available. Online access to the abstracts and the new search engine have solved the problem. Additionally, the large number of excellent sessions and interesting new topics has added another level of complexity for someone trying to pick the best program. My favorites are always the Plenary Scientific Session and some of the education and scientific committee sessions. I also enjoy the posters that allow one to talk directly with the young scientists and physicians in training. In addition, discussions in the hallways are sometimes just as important as the data presented in the sessions.
As the time between acceptance of papers and online publishing has been reduced to only a few days, it becomes more difficult to assure that the majority of data presented at the meeting are unpublished. With the Late-Breaking Abstracts Session, ASH has once again found an answer to the challenge. But the annual meeting is only one of ASH’s many activities. Blood is the undisputed leading journal in the field of hematology, and more recent additions such as The Hematologist also capture growing interest. ASH also took a leading role in continuing education and shaping policy, making ASH a comprehensive force in promoting hematology at all levels. Both competition and collaboration between research groups can accelerate scientific progress. If we can find a solution for how to assign credit for discoveries made by multiple groups collaborating on the same topic, I am sure there would be even more collaborations and probably more rapid advances, particularly in basic science projects. Perhaps hematologists should once again try to take the lead in solving a problem that faces other areas of research.
At age 50, ASH is in its prime and, due to the stature of its leaders, will likely remain in that position for years to come.
