The next biannual congress of the International Diabetes Federation will be held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, on 4-8 December 2017 and will feature more than 200 speakers and representations from 230 national diabetes associations. Register now.
At the last congress (in Vancouver in 2015) I was hired by the IDF to develop and provide a diabetes module of the mHealth for Healthcare Professionals course and I find it amazing that this freely shared video recording is the only content from the entire 200+ hours of conference proceedings that there is any record of because despite the IDF’s claimed ambitions (eg. to embed mHealth and make it a compulsory part of quality care for people with diabetes) has a bizarre outdated approach to sharing.
The organisers were so out of touch in 2015 that they were starting conference sessions by showing a slide that reminded delegates not to take or share images/videos.
They were even publicly telling off delegates who they discovered sharing content with the event’s #WDC2015 hashtag on Twitter. Worse still some of these delegates weren’t tough media hacks or experienced clinicians but Patients who they generously given up their week and been sponsored to fly around the world to attend the congress!
I find it quite amazing that in 2017 a congress of such high profile is still not live streamed and that the media guidelines are still so incredibly outdated:
The only sense I can make of it is that the federation feels it might lose control of the conversations but it’s really bizarre because the #IDF2017 hashtag is really prominently posted on the homepage etc:
The conference website is also really poorly designed and the “IDF Congress Profile” tool that’s supposed to help you plan your congress experience is next to useless.
To make it a bit easier I’ve compiled the following mHealth Guide that you may find useful if you’re going (or looking to conduct research and follow along via the limited ‘unauthorised’ social media sharing). If you’ve seen anything I’ve missed please let us know in the comments thread and I’ll update the listing.
Tuesday 5th December 2017
13:15 – 14:45, ICC 4
Community approaches to diabetes care. Mobile diabetes clinic: experience in Palestine
Ahmad Abu Al-Halaweh, Director of the Diabetes Care Centre, Augusta Victoria Hospital (Palestine)
13:15 – 14:45, Hall 11
Digital health and modern technologies: Integrating digital health with peer and family support in disadvantaged groups
John D. Piette PhD, Professor of Health Behavior & Health Education & Centre for Managing Chronic Disease, School of Public Health at the University of Michigan
New technologies in diabetes management
Ibrahim Saleh Al-Busaidi, Oman Diabetes Society, Sultanate of Oman.
Opportunities for diabetes prevention and care through modern technologies: B he@lthy B mobile in India and Senegal
Dr Line Kleinebreil, Consultant, WHO (Switzerland)
Dr Subhash S. Pujari MD, M .D (Medicine), Associate Professor of Medicine, DM Waynad Institute of Medical Sciences (India)
H. Eskandari, ITU/BHealthyBMobile (Switzerland)
Lamine Gueye, Faculté de Médecine de Dakar, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar (Senegal)
Opportunities for diabetes prevention and care through modern technologies: B he@lthy B mobile in India and Senegal
Prof A Ramachandran, India Diabetes Research Foundation & Dr. A.Ramachandran’s Diabetes Hospitals (India)
Pankaj Joshi, Director at Diabetes Care Centre & WHO Country Office for India (South Africa)
Dr Fikru Tesfaye Tullu, Acting Coordinator Health Programs, WHO India
R. Kumar, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Govt of India.
15:15 – 16:45, ICC 4
Peer support: applications and approaches. Peer support in China
Zilin Sun, Professor of Endocrinology, Southeast University Medical School, Nanjing (China)
16:00 – 16:45, Conference Hall B
Diabetes tools and apps – What’s new, what works, and what do patients really want?
Adam Brown, head of diabetes technology & digital health, Close Concerns
Wednesday 6th December 2017
13:45 – 14:15, ICC 1
eHealth solutions for diabetes: Hype or hope?
Cornelis Tack, Prof of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Medical Centre (The Netherlands)
