The World of Medicine Conference 2023
We extend our heartfelt appreciation to everyone who participated in The World of Medicine Conference 2023, a two-day international forum co-hosted by the Asklepian Society and the Student Surgical Association of Hong Kong. We are grateful for the presence of over 300 secondary school and medical students across 18 countries and regions, who joined us either in-person or via Zoom.
Day 1
The conference kicked off with an inspiring keynote speech by Professor Joseph Sung from Nanyang Technological University, who shared his insights on the future of medicine with artificial intelligence. This was followed by informative presentations by Professor Gilberto Leung, Professor Kent-man Chu, Dr Kendrick Shih, Dr Innes Wan, and Dr Allen Yeoh, who shared their expertise on clinical neuroscience, general surgery, ocular surgery on cornea, and chemotherapy respectively. The audience had proactively raised questions and pushed the discussion to a further level.
The evening session began with a fascinating dialogue by Professor Jo Cambridge from the University College London on Rituximab - Treatment for Arthritis and Lymphoma, followed by a discussion on how human genetics can inspire a new class of therapeutics given by Professor Cigall Kadoch from the Harvard Medical School. The day ended with a conversation on developing cancer cures by engineering skin bacteria by Professor Erin Chen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The participants were then given approximately two hours to prepare for the case presentation competition, where they formed groups and prepared for a five-minute presentation. They were required to demonstrate their creativity, ingenuity and ambition in tackling one of the following three topics: 1) A new approach for the search of novel antivirals; 2) An alternative plan for the HK Government to tackle Covid-19; 3) A novel method to construct a pan-influenza vaccine.
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Day 2
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In the afternoon, after Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan from the University of Cambridge discussed the secrets of tuberculosis came the long-awaited case presentation competition. In the preliminary round, participants presented their cases to representatives from the two hosting societies, and shortlisted candidates were asked to present their cases in front of the audience to Professor Ivan Hung, the head of the judging panel. The presentations were deeply impressive and innovative, with the winner of the competition combining artificial intelligence and medicine, and presenting with us a python code to tackle the challenges in developing antivirals.
On the second day of the conference where participants gathered at the MIT Innovation Node in Kowloon Tong, Professor Desai Miraj from the Yale Medical School introduced the concept of “structural psychology,” followed by a sharing on the genomics of cancer by Dr Jake June-Koo Lee from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The morning session concluded with Dr Alan Sihoe sharing with us about how thoracic surgery has evolved and advanced over the past years.
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We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all the participants for their time and commitment, and to all the professors and doctors for their innovative and inspiring discussions. We hope that this conference has provided everyone with valuable knowledge and insights, and we look forward to seeing you again in our future events.
