Another great day here at AAIM. Harvard’s own Dr. Sanjiv Chopra kicked it off with an inspiring and, in one case, heart rending tale of the various triumphs of medicine from the distant and recent past. He also offered some very interesting projections into the future, which ranged from the fairly non-controversial increase in the use of ‘personalized medicine’ to the somewhat more fanciful ‘exercise pill’ to the downright unlikely ‘free healthcare in America’ within the next 50 years. He was a wonderful speaker – and I’m not just saying that because of the free book. Dr. Elyssa Del Valle, fresh from her victory over Serena Williams, brought a lot of interesting studies about liver fibrosis and cirrhosis without the use of biopsy. Kevin Glasgow and Iraida Labra from MunichRe talked about interesting cases of life insurance fraud. If you had asked what I expected to see at AAIM this year “fake Hatian funeral” would not have been among them. At lunch it was an honor to see the esteemed doctors Mackenzie, Titcomb and Clark receive the degree of Fellow. The afternoon session brought us Dr. Faisal Merchant who discussed many interesting aspects of syncope (hint for prospective JIM authors: look at his slides – plenty of great fodder for articles there). Speaking of new authors, my talk with Ross Mackenzie brought in a cadre of enthusiastic prospective authors whom I hope will soon flood Ross’ inbox with manuscripts. Rounding it out, I attended Cliff Titcomb’s excellent talk about practical mortality analysis. I especially appreciated his treatment of Markov models and will consider expanding our treatment of that in the Basic Mortality Course in the future.
AAIM Day 1
I’m attending the AAIM Annual Meeting. The first day was great – with a great list of speakers who created a lot of buzz in the audience. Our first platform with Dr. Elizabeth Arias from the National Center for Health Statistics was excellent and very timely, as she addressed the spike in accidental poisoning deaths – which are mostly from opioids. Another interesting finding she highlighted was the “Hispanic paradox” where Americans of Hispanic ethnicity have, on average, a survival advantage over non-Hispanics. The first concurrent session was highlighted by Dr. Anitha Rao’s excellent discussion of dementia; she is also an innovator who has developed a care planning tool for families struggling with this disease – and which could also help insurers optimize home-based care solutions. Dr. Ira Adams-Chapman presented an encyclopedic talk on the morbidity and mortality of infant prematurity. I felt like I was in medical school again, with a great professor.
In the afternoon, Dr. Jaime Vengoecchea brought some much needed perspective to the genetic testing furor. He really sand-blasted some of the shine off of the shiny object. His talk was well received and hopefully will bubble up to the ears of industry executives. Our final platform by Mike Fulks from CRL was up to his usual standards of excellence and reviewed some very relevant laboratory conundrums. He also did a good job of dealing with a very persistent questioner.