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ERS Congress 2016 Summary

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As we informed earlier two abstracts, describing our preliminary data & system analysis findings, were accepted for Thematic Poster Session during ERS Congress 2016.

Now, the congress is finished and we could summarize it subjectively.

Firstly, that was a great experience for us, both from scientific and business point of view. Discussions at posters gave us new insights and valuable feedback. The quality of mobile application and the possibilities to perform networking provided the real opportunity to network and grow.

Of course, the conference’s scope was very wide, but from our perspective, some sessions could be emphasized (by giving main thoughts in bullets):

1. Primary Care [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

  • The big problem is to come up, how to deal with low adherence?
  • There is high need to prepare te guidelines for multi-morbidity patients.
  • Strong necessity to prepare computer-related models in getting right diagnosis.
  • We need to evaluate implementation strategy, not only how to practise has to be implemented.
  • Complex is really important from the decision point of view.
  • GP become important part in the medical system, including Family Medicine and also help from nurses.
  • Huge need for developing tomorrow leaders.
  • Big Data could be used in personalized medicine, e.g., as a prelimanary predictor.

2. Epidemiological aspects of OSA [9]

  • Still age and BMI are treated as main aspects, however other extrinsic factors were pointed out to be important to consider during diagnosis, as well as treatment.

3. Telemonitoring of ventilator-dependent patients [10,11]

  • Telemonitoring/Tele-rehabilitation seems to decrease the rate of hospitality and admissions.
  • There is a lack of sensitive and specific algorithm to detect COPD exacerbations.

4. Is sleep apnea causing cancer? [12]

  • It seems that yes, however mainly due to the hypoxia, indirectly caused by apnea.
  • One could consider intermittent hypoxia as the most threatening, particularly at higher frequencies, due to lack of good adaptation of the organism.

5. Measuring physical activity in chronic respiratory disease [13]

  • Apart from the activity, wheather, environment and social aspects need to be taken into account.
  • However, some issues respecting lack of transition from engineering concepts and medical practice, were raised.

6. Driving and sleepiness [14]

  • EU directive states, that both sleep apnea, and sleepiness, are needed to rule out the possibility to prevent making driving licence.

7. Novel tools and approaches to diagnosing obstructive sleep apnoea [15,16,17,18]

  • Driving simulator provides really good objective tool to assess
  • More and more cars have different systems, but does not always mean that you are safe.
  • Microsleep appears to be important problem.
  • Instead of predicting single whole-night parameters, it could be reliable to calculate trends during entire night.References:

    [1] Rob Horne, „The challenge of adherence: recognising and addressing poor adherence (in time limited consultations)
    [2] Ioanna Tsiligianni, „The challenge of multi-morbidity: assessing and managing the whole patient
    [3] Erik Bischoff, „Leading quality in primary care: GPwSIs in the Netherlands
    [4] Hilary Pinnock, „Evaluating implementation: a framework for implementation science
    [5] Jo Buchanan, „Developing a primary healthcare service: improving quality and status of family medicine
    [6] Noel Baxter, „Developing tomorrow’s leaders: UK respiratory leaders programme
    [7] Brendan Delaney, „Using big data to change healthcare: improving quality of care with routine data
    [8] Alvar Agusti Garcia-Navarro, „Tomorrow’s medicine today: overview of personalized medicine and insights into tomorrow’s world
    [9] Poster discussion chaired by Renata L. Riha and Andrea Lanza
    [10] Joao Carlos Winck, „Tele-rehabilitation for home-mechanically ventilated patients
    [11] Jean Christian Borel, „Telemonitoring to prevent exacerbations in patients with COPD and home-mechanical ventilation: a useful tool?
    [12] Hot topic session chaired by Renata L. Riha and Maria Bonsignore
    [13] Poster discussion chaired by Rafael Mesquita and Thierry Troosters
    [14] Walter McNicholas, „Sleep apnoea syndrome and the EU Directive
    [15] Francesco Fanfulla, „Micro-sleep (MS) as a marker of resistance to excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in patients with OSA
    [16] Akszay Dwarakanath, „Establishing a normal range model using real time events, driving simulator (MiniUoLDS) outcome and performance based on standard deviation of lane position (SDLP) in untreated OSAS patients and controls
    [17] Andrea Crespo Sedano, „Assessment of an automated neural network based on unsupervised oximetry at home in the diagnosis of patients with moderate-to-severe SAHS and COPD
    [18] M Angeles Sanchez Quiroga, „Efficacy and cost-effectiveness of home respiratory polygraphy

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