IRIA 2013 our national conference, was held last week. The conference was held this time in Indore, my first visit to that city. The venue was the picturesque Daly college, whose main building looks more like a palace than a college. The Indore weather was perfect during the day, crisp and sunny, like November in the Delhi of the 70s. The nights were a little nippy though and the evening banquet arrangements included a number of fire warmers. At the TeleradTech booth all our representatives were wearing snappy cloud T-shirts, to drive home the ‘Radspa on the cloud’ message, however as the day progressed the message needed to be hidden under a warm pullover!
My talk at the conference was on Mobile Teleradiology. This was scheduled in a parallel session that was held in one of the smaller lecture rooms, but the gratifying thing was that it was packed to capacity, with a larger crowd watching on the TV screen outside. I was reminded of a similar experience at the Bangalore IRIA a few years ago when the smallest room in the convention center was assigned for the Teleradiology session. I arrived to find the room packed and people jostling outside the door to get in. When I tapped on the shoulder of the person in front of me he snapped “ there is no room inside”. I had to restrain my amusement and reply “But I am the speaker!!”, whereupon the crowd suddenly parted and made way for me to enter! This time around, I made sure to be there early. If the number of questions asked is an indication of a successful talk, then my talk was a huge success! The questions just kept coming, making for a very stimulating discussion. It also renewed my conviction that mobile Teleradiology is an idea whose time has come in India.
Other topics covered in my session were Data Mining in Radiology, Cloud Computing in Radiology, Entrepreneurship in Radiology and Communication Skills, all of which made for an interesting and eclectic session.
Next to the TeleradTech booth was one from China which displayed a portable ultrasound unit on a tablet type device – touchpad sonography! Quite impressive!
IRIA as usual was pleasant because of the opportunity to reconnect with old friends/colleagues, who are otherwise rarely seen even if in the same town. These included Dr Ashok Khurana and Dr Ramamurthy both Fetal sonographers and teachers par excellence, Dr Hirdesh Sahni of Command hospital, Dr Sanjiv Bhalla of Mallinckrodt, and the ever young Dr Kakarla Subba Rao.
And chatting with young radiologists from around the country is always educative. I spoke with one young radiologist who had worked 12 years doing ultrasound in a rural setting, doing 100 scans/day, including what he described as ‘head to foot’ screening sonograms for early cancers in a semirural population. The volume of material that he had seen in his practice is of a scale rarely seen in the western world.
In general, the conference had a strong ultrasound focus, in keeping with the interests of the location. Makes sense.