‘’This year our focus is on private practitioners and post graduate students’’

What does it mean to be the organising chairperson of IRIA 2014?

Dr Bhupendra Ahuja

I have had prior experience in organising the IRIA event in 2005. I was the Organising Secretary then. Therefore, I was aware of the requirements and responsibilities associated with organising such a big radiology event. I feel very fortunate to be apart of the organising team and I hope to make this event a big success.

How long have you been preparing for this annual meeting? What are the challenges faced so far?

Our preparations are on since last year. All members of the IRIA are mostly private practitioners and so we already have an extremely busy schedule; therefore we need a lot of time to organise this event. Since I am the Organising Chairperson for this year, I knew what was needed. I first started with organising the scientific programme. Now organising the scientific programme isn’t an easy task. It has to maintain the theme and also focus on disseminating the right message that we intend to give to our delegates. Moreover, organising a scientific programme needs like minded people to come together, hence we prepared a team of six to eight members who would be in charge of the scientific programme. This time we have a faculty of 108 people for the scientific programme.

The most biggest challenge this year was to convince trade exhibitors. The fluctuation of the US dollar and the falling Indian rupee had made exhibitors reluctant to participate in IRIA 2014. It took us nearly six months to convince them.

What are the highlights of this year? What is the theme selected this year?

Conference is one way of updating on the latest happenings in the field. Nearly 800-900 post graduate students attend this conference year on year and so all through these years our focus has been to create opportunities for providing information on the latest in the field to these students. Apart from from post graduate students we have also had our scientific programmes designed keeping in mind the private practitioners attending the conference.

This year our focus is on private practitioners and post graduate students. Therefore, our theme for this year is ‘Better imaging for healthier life’. This theme is chosen mainly because diagnostic imaging these days has become a prime source for clinical diagnosis of any medical condition.

How will this year’s event be different from past events? Is there anything new that will be introduced this year?

Year on year IRIA receives a good response, both from the delegates and the exhibitors. So every year we have to introduce some unique. Here is a list of new things introduced this year:

• While maintaining this year’s theme, we have asked every speaker to dedicate 10 minutes of their session towards giving important tips on how to efficiently report one’s diagnosis. The idea is to promote effective reporting in order to increase efficiency of radiologists.
• This year we have cut down on the number of halls. We have kept three halls dedicated to sessions related to system and three halls dedicated to modality.
• We have also increased the time limit of the conference. The conference this year will begin at 9 am and end at 6 pm.
• Workshops have been included in the session itself to save time. Moreover, all ultrasound sessions will be in the form of live workshops. Since ultrasound is a live branch we have kept five workshops dedicated to ultrasound.
• The most unique introduction this year is our new website, which is highly interactive platform for delegates and the speakers to communicate. This website can also be accessed through mobile phones. Delegates can ask questions during the session using the mobile app on our website. This will also save time and give an opportunity to every delegate to ask their question.
• Also, we have received this year, 600 oral presentation, 480 poster presentations which is a very encouraging response. We are going to have 25 e-stations as kiosks and 25 PCs and laptops with categorised presentations and papers for the delegates to browse and read through.

What are your expectations from IRIA 2014?

This year we expect a very good response. We have already received more than 2000 registrations for our scientific programme and all our exhibition stalls have been booked.

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