This blog entry is related to a radiology conference I attend every year in Chicago, called the RSNA (or in its full form, the Annual meeting of the Radiologic Society of North America). It is the mother of all conferences, with 57,084 attendees in 2010, 35,593 of them professionals (the rest are exhibitors). It is an amazing academic experience, like attending an intense week-long university, and the cumulative knowledge that is exchanged in the course of this week in digital terms must easily extend into the terabyte range. It is also a tradeshow of immense proportion, wherein millions are traded in the form of the latest in imaging technologies. So in essence it is two parallel universes, academia and industry, neither of which can exist without the other.
Most demonstrative of this symbiosis is the donor reception, where both elements rub shoulders in a setting of mutual regard. As a Silver Donor to the RSNA research fund, we are invited, and it is gratifying to meet some of the leading lights of US radiology academia, and learn about the cutting edge funded radiology research that one’s donation is funding.
Also interesting is the experience of being an exhibitor oneself. The booth is at once an anchor and a ship, an expression of one’s corporate identity. This year, we exhibited not just our teleradiology reporting services but some of the newer elements of our organization, our technology arm (www.teleradtech.com) , our teaching website (www.radguru.net), and our Foundation (www.teleradfoundation.org).
Reconnecting with our clients is to me the best part of the conference. Meeting new prospects and interviewing prospective teleradiologists has its own charm. And seeing first hand the new trends in technology as well as in radiologic practice is always exciting.
My colleague Dr Fox presented an excellent abstract entitled “It’s 11 PM, do you know what your MR scanner is up to?” in the Teleradiology session. This session also included an interesting discussion on the corporatization of Teleradiology.
Meeting old friends is undoubtedly the icing on the RSNA cake. Attending the Yale alumni reunion is always a pleasant and warm experience.
For me the most satisfying moment of last year’s conference was when a radiologist from Italy stopped at our booth and volunteered his services to our Foundation, to report scans for poor patients in Asia, free of charge. To me, that is what teleradiology is fundamentally about, which is bridging gaps, be they geographic, economic or medical.