Bahrain to Host Major Health-care Symposium

Feb. 8, 2009 - PRLog -- Bahrain to Host Major Health-care Symposium

A major international health-care conference is being held for the first time in the Middle East later this year.
   “Evidence-based Medicine and Health Promotion: Research into Practice” will take place on June 1 and 2 in Muharraq, Bahrain, at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RSCI) Medical University of Bahrain (MUB) under the patronage of H.H. Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of Bahrain.
   The symposium is being organised by the Bahrain branch of the UK-based Cochrane Centre of the Cochrane Collaboration (CC), a global organisation with its secretariat is based in Oxford, England.
   “We’re pleased to make our facilities available to such an important medical and respected group as the Cochrane Collaboration and their partners in this symposium, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE),” said Prof. Kevin O’Malley, RCSI-MUB president.
   “Since opening our new campus in October 2008, this is the first major international scholarly meeting to take place in the university.”
“A major goal of RCSI, Bahrain, is to create a centre of research excellence in the university, and collaboration will be an important part of our strategy,” Professor O’Malley said. “Therefore, our hosting the symposium has very practical relevance for us.”
Plenary sessions at the conference will take place each morning with four workshops in the afternoon. About 150 participants are expected, chiefly from countries within the region.
“The conference succeeds in bringing together two of the world’s leading international organisations–the Cochrane Collaboration and NICE–in a symposium combining the disciplines of research and the turning of that research into practice, offering something for all stakeholders involved in providing health care,” underlines Dr. Zbys Fedorowicz, conference chairman and director of the Bahrain branch of the Cochrane Collaboration.
Dr. Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Minister of State for Defence Affairs, is the president of the conference which is being co-chaired by Dr. Aziz Hamza, undersecretary at the Ministry of Health.
The general secretary of the conference is Dr. Mohammed Al Muharraqi, training co-ordinator for the Bahrain branch of the UK CC and maxillo-facial surgeon at Bahrain Defence Force Hospital.
Other key Bahrain-based officials linked with the event and members of the scientific committee are Dr. Nawaf Al-Hamer, Dr. Fayek Hilli, Dr. Najeeb Jamsheer, Dr. Jamal Al-Sayyad and Dr. David Whitford.
The sponsors of this event include BDF Hospital, the Ministry of Health and Bahrain Medical Bulletin.
The symposium follows a three-day meeting of the directors of the monitoring and registration group, an advisory unit to the board of directors of CC, in conjunction with director of the UK Cochrane Centre Prof. Mike Clarke and chief executive officer of the Cochrane Collaboration Nick Royle.
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Caption: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Medical University, Bahrain

Sidebar

Bahrain and the Cochrane Collaboration

The symposium in Bahrain “validates the significant contribution the Bahrain branch of the UK Cochrane Centre (sponsored by the Ministry of Health), the Cochrane Collaboration (CC) has made in raising awareness in the region about the role of CC as the most reliable source of the evidence for the effectiveness of health-care inventions,” said Dr. Fedorowicz.
The role of NICE is to take that “gold-level” evidence, translating it into authoritative and reliable downstream guidance on health care for patients, health-care professionals and the wider public.
The most recent tally of systematic reviews by CC review authors from the Bahrain branch now exceeds that of any other country in the region, covering a range of topics from management options in sickle-cell disease and colorectal cancer, treatment of allergic rhinitis and gastroenteritis to medicine for the treatment of inborn errors of metabolism in addition to several oral health-related topics.
A number of Bahraini lead authors have completed CC systematic reviews on topics of global importance, and some of this evidence in these systematic reviews has already been used to inform and change health-care policy in Britain and many other Western and developed countries.
Many of these Bahraini and Bahrain-based authors have contributed to and published their research with colleagues from Sri Lanka, Great Britain, the USA, Switzerland, Brazil, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Norway, Iran and Oman.
Most of the research has been published in a high-impact-factor medical journal, the Cochrane Library, which is a collection of databases containing high-quality, independent evidence to inform health-care decision-making.
CC reviews represent the highest level of evidence on which to base clinical-treatment decisions.
Recent conferences and workshops on systematic reviews conducted by the Bahrain branch of CC have been held in Britain, Brazil, Turkey, Sudan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.
The symposium will provide greater international exposure of the work of the Bahrain chapter, in addition to enabling an exchange of ideas between researchers while providing them with the opportunity to develop networks with other review authors in the region.
The topics covered by these high-profile international speakers include the most important burning issue of health promotion, with its emphasis on the multi-factorial approach to health care.
“Cost effectiveness of health-care interventions is an important topic for health-care payers, funders and policymakers, particularly in these economic times, and therefore the symposium will include a relevant segment,” Dr. Fedorowicz underscored.
The methods used to review diagnostic test accuracy, such as the effectiveness, validity and reliability of some of the many tests ordered by clinicians, will be covered for the first time in the region in a workshop conducted by Dr. Rob Scholten, director of the Dutch Cochrane Centre.
NICE representatives, including chief executive Andrew Dillon, will be sharing with participants how their guidance and clinical guidelines, many of which are based on CC reviews, are used in the UK to help the government make health-care policy decisions about medicines and treatments to be used in the British National Health Service).
NICE is also coming to Bahrain to explore, for the first time in the region, the possibility of establishing partnership agreements and collaborative projects with the Ministry of Health and the Bahrain Defence Force Hospital.
It is anticipated that these projects will include joint development of clinical guidelines focusing on the health-care priorities of the Kingdom and especially those relevant to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, sickle-cell and other genetic diseases.
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Sidebar

The Role of the Cochrane Collaboration

Every year thousands of health-care-related research projects are published in hundreds of journals around the world.
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organisation bringing many of these papers together in a systematic manner, assembling the results as reviews of the effectiveness of health-care treatments.
Since it was founded 14 years ago, the Cochrane Collaboration has already produced 3,700 reviews, estimating that at least 10,000 reviews are needed to cover all health-care interventions that have already been investigated in controlled trials.
The original research may have been very costly but Cochrane reviews make this information more readily accessible to the global health community.
Without such reviews, those making decisions about their own or someone else’s health care are unlikely to be able to access and make full use of the most up-to-date health-care research information.

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Every year thousands of health-care-related research projects are published in hundreds of journals around the world. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organisation bringing many of these papers together in a systematic manner, assembling the results as reviews of the effectiveness of health-care treatments. Since it was founded 14 years ago, the Cochrane Collaboration has already produced 3,700 reviews, estimating that at least 10,000 reviews are needed to cover all health-care interventions that have already been investigated in controlled trials.