Abstract
The first UKMedLab conference, hosted by the Association for Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine (ACB), took place between the 14 and 18 June 2021. This was delivered as a virtual event online, courtesy of Ashfield Event Experiences, owing to the ongoing restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the first ACB National Meeting since May 2019 and combined the leadership and management sessions formerly delivered by the Frontiers in Laboratory Medicine conference series with the science and education sessions previously provided by the ACB FOCUS meetings. Additional sessions covering the ACB medal competition, an update on scholarships, clinical cases, training day, and a series of industry-focused workshops made up the comprehensive offerings over five full days.
Some statistics: 63 speakers covered training, leadership and management, and science and education. Total registrations for the meeting totaled an impressive 409 delegates with 173 registering for the training day.
Highlights: Dr David Grenache, President of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry gave a detailed insight into the area of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, highlighting the huge advances in technology but also the pitfalls that exist because of lack of regulation, data security, and unintended consequences the knowledge might bring. Prof Ana-Maria Simundic, President of the European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (EFLM), gave an update on how best to monitor the pre-analytical phase and how such factors can affect our results. Prof Julian Barth, ACB ex-President, spoke on the much-misunderstood concept of “normality” in laboratory medicine and how we should best approach reference ranges including how to interpret results against them.
The ACB Medal award was admirably contested by four excellent speakers, with Dr Jenny Nobes from Dundee taking first place with her talk “Enhanced liver fibrosis (ELF™) scoring: a solution to reducing indeterminate fibrosis diagnoses in the intelligent liver function test (iLFT) pathway?” Runner up was awarded to Rachel Griffiths for “Automation of the thiopurine S-methyltransferase (TPMT) phenotyping assay using the Biomek NXP and Biomek i5 Automated Liquid Handling Workstations.” The interactive clinical cases, hosted by Dr Danielle Freedman, were excellent as usual, with 8 cases being presented. Darmiga Thayabaran’s case titled “After the laughter,” highlighting an unusual case of B12 deficiency secondary to nitrous oxide therapy, was awarded first prize, with second prize going to Niamh Horton for her case “Sometimes it is a zebra,” focusing on anti-NMDAR auto-immune encephalitis.
Posters: A total of 107 posters were presented virtually, and the abstracts are published as an online supplement to this journal
A number of poster and audit awards were also made during the Conference:
Poster Award 2020: Winner: Chris Hughes with “Urinary sodium to chloride ratio: A useful test for investigating hypokalaemia.” Runner Up: Diya Patel with “The Significance of a high ALP in pregnancy.”
Audit Award 2020: Winner: Adrian Heald with “Recalibration of thinking about adrenocortical function assessment: How the ‘random’ cortisol relates to the Short Synacthen Test Verdict.” Runner Up: Jennifer Nobes with “Intelligent Liver Function Testing: an update from 18 months of active use.”
Poster Award 2021: Winner: Corey Pritchard with “A case study of siblings with Autoimmune Polyendocrinopathy Syndrome Type 1.”
Audit Award 2021: Winner: Sally Hanton with “An audit of follow-up of small bands detected on serum protein electrophoresis.” Runner Up: Jennifer Simpson with “Audit of Ethylene Glycol and Methanol testing over a 5-year period.”
The UKMedLab conference theme will continue into the future, bringing together elements of training, science, leadership, and management. The re-establishment of face-to-face conferences will once again facilitate professional engagement, networking, and enhanced collaboration with industry partners. Transmission of future face-to-face conferences as virtual events will also allow participation at a distance for those who cannot travel or prefer to experience the sessions at their own pace. UKMedLab 2022 is now being considered on that basis, and it will be in London, UK. UKMedLab is the future, UKMedLab is now ….
Supplemental Material
sj-pdf-1-acb-10.1177_00045632211040679 – Supplemental Material for UKMedLab2021 conference—building a new platform for the future
Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-acb-10.1177_00045632211040679 for UKMedLab2021 conference—building a new platform for the future by Bernard Croal and Sarah Robinson in Annals of Clinical Biochemistry
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The UKMedLab21 Conference was dependent on the input of many individuals across the ACB office, organizing committees, speakers, and delegates.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: BC President of the ACB, Trustee of the Royal College of Pathologists.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical approval
Not required.
Guarantor
BC.
Contributorship
Written by BC and SR.
Supplemental material
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