Blog posts

School of Medicine reorganisation and new Head of Undergraduate School of Medicine

The School of Medicine has recently been reorganised – adopting a new structure to establish clearer leadership and strengthen links with academic departments and the NHS.

Martin LuptonMr Martin Lupton (previously one of the Deputy Directors of Education) has been appointed as Head of Undergraduate School of Medicine. Martin took some time to speak to us about his new role, what the reorganisation means for medical students and how he believes the university education experience will evolve in the coming years.

Q: Congratulations on your appointment as the Head of Undergraduate School of Medicine. Can you describe this new role, as well as your main aims and objectives?

Thank you. I think the best way to describe this new role is as a facilitator and communicator. As the Chair of the School Board, my primary responsibilities are to facilitate the new leadership team in their work to improve the quality of our educational offering and to ensure that at every level the School listens to and is responsive to its students and staff (both those in our academic departments and in NHS settings).

Q: The School of Medicine has recently been reorganised with a new structure. How will these changes provide benefits to the educational offering and student experience?

Imperial College School of Medicine is a great and very large organisation, requiring collaboration across North West London. To ensure that the School can build on its success at a time of enormous change both in the University sector and the NHS, we have developed a new structure. The new structure will allow us to concentrate on the twin challenges of strategy and delivery.

Q: Which aspects of the role are you most looking forward to, and what do you envisage your greatest challenges to be?

The aspect of the role I most look forward to is also the greatest challenge.  The changes in the NHS are going to require significant parallel changes in our curriculum.  This is undoubtedly going to be difficult to achieve, but provides us with amazing opportunities to refresh and improve the content of our course.

Q: With the rise of online learning and social media, how do you think the higher education experience will change at Imperial over the coming years?

Imperial College Medical School is in a state of permanent evolution. We have already introduced iPads to the senior clinical years and have been developing high quality learning materials to populate an information spine that runs in parallel with our curriculum map. I think that in time more of the factual content of our course will be delivered through on line learning, which will be fantastic as it will allow us to use our human resource to concentrate on the ancient and unchanging need for apprenticeship and interaction in clinical medicine. The new and the old will work with increasing synergy.

Q: What do you see as the greatest benefits and opportunities for medical students studying at Imperial?

Where to begin? The two outstanding opportunities for our students are science and medical excellence. Imperial is a world class scientific institution and our students have a unique opportunity to be exposed to medical science in its evolution, from bench to bedside. Furthermore the Academic Health Partnership gathers together a stable of some of the most famous hospitals in the world, which care for probably the most diverse population in the world, in arguably the greatest city in the world and our students study in this environment! Why would you want to go anywhere else?

PCD Hold Meeting on School Feeding at House of Commons

4 girls school feeding 2

School feeding’s role in supporting agricultural development and educational achievement is to be the central topic of an address by H.E. Ogbeni Raul Argebesola, Govenor of Osun State, Nigeria, leading experts and British parliamentarians at a special event in the UK’s House of Commons on Wednesday 22nd January.

The Governor has been invited by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Agriculture and Food for Development and the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) Imperial College London, to speak at a meeting attended by development experts focusing on the evolution and improvement of government-led Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes in low and middle income countries which feed school children using food grown locally by smallholder farmers.

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

New Faculty of Medicine website

After a few exceptionally busy months, we relaunched our Faculty webpages on Friday 17 January 2014.

The new website has been in development for a while to showcase the work of the Faculty within our main research themes. In order to do this, research landing pages have been developed and the old and out of date material removed.

Our research on film

A large and exciting part of the project was to produce a high quality video for each ‘research landing page’ to more easily communicate what the Faculty is doing in each main area of research. Whilst the filming was completed in late-October (thank you to all that were involved!), the editing process took a bit longer than had been anticipated – trying to cut down the footage filmed in half in order to fit into the time allocated for each video was tricky.

We produced 13 videos in total: 11 for the research themes, another to give an overview of our research and one to better communicate how, through the AHSC and NIHR Imperial BRC, the Faculty translates its research.

Other objectives for the website were to:

  • Improve the homepage:
    • making it easier to navigate to key content
    • better promote news, social media activity and other content
    • increase awareness of the Academic Health Science centre and our other strategic initiatives
  • Improve the way we are communicating research across the Faculty:
    • Creating a much improved “Our research” landing page
    • Better communication of the AHSC, NIHR Imperial BRC and other strategic partnerships and initiatives
  • Review, reduce and re-prioritise content:
    • Changing our main navigation
    • Culling old, out of date and unused content
  • Audience focussed architecture:
    • Re-purposing “teaching” into “Prospective students” giving a better overview of our courses / education and in particular our Master’s degrees
    • Better information / signposting for Staff
    • Better content for the “about us” section
  • Preparation for the College website re-design / CMS project:
    • Details below

College website re-design project

With the new College website design and content management system (CMS) on the horizon, we have taken the opportunity to review content, and where necessary, cull out of date, old and redundant pages. This will make transferring to the new design and CMS a much easier, and less time consuming, process.

By using Google Analytics data (and information on when pages were last edited), we reviewed page views etc to decide what content was clearly not being visited and where content was extremely old, removing it from the website.

There is still work to be done to further improve the website and we are looking forward to getting to grips with a new content management system and college website design in the coming months.

We’ll be in touch with website editors and owners in the coming months to discuss and plan how the wider faculty website transfer process is to happen.

If you have any comments or questions, please use the comments section below.

James and Al
Digital Communications Team, Faculty of Medicine

Department of Infectious Diseases & Immunity – January Update

Awards

Nicola Lynskey was awarded a highly prestigious Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship. The sum awarded was £250,000 over 4 years, and is likely to commence April 2014.

Publications

Paper published in PLoS Pathogens: RocA Truncation Underpins Hyper-Encapsulation, Carriage Longevity and Transmissibility of Serotype M18 Group A Streptococci.

Abstract: Group A streptococcal isolates of serotype M18 are historically associated with epidemic waves of pharyngitis and the nonsuppurative immune sequela rheumatic fever. The serotype is defined by a unique, highly encapsulated phenotype, yet the molecular basis for this unusual colony morphology is unknown. Here we identify a truncation in the regulatory protein RocA, unique to and conserved within our serotype M18 GAS collection, and demonstrate that it underlies the characteristic M18 capsule phenotype. Reciprocal allelic exchange mutagenesis of rocA between M18 GAS and M89 GAS demonstrated that truncation of RocA was both necessary and sufficient for hyper-encapsulation via up-regulation of both precursors required for hyaluronic acid synthesis. Although RocA was shown to positively enhance covR transcription, quantitative proteomics revealed RocA to be a metabolic regulator with activity beyond the CovR/S regulon. M18 GAS demonstrated a uniquely protuberant chain formation following culture on agar that was dependent on excess capsule and the RocA mutation. Correction of the M18 rocA mutation reduced GAS survival in human blood, and in vivo naso-pharyngeal carriage longevity in a murine model, with an associated drop in bacterial airborne transmission during infection. In summary, a naturally occurring truncation in a regulator explains the encapsulation phenotype, carriage longevity and transmissibility of M18 GAS, highlighting the close interrelation of metabolism, capsule and virulence.

Amy Cock
PA to Professor Jon S. Friedland
Dept of Infectious Diseases & Immunity

Live Below the Line – Get Involved

Live below the line

Live Below the Line is a fundraising and campaigning event which challenges people to live below the poverty line for 5 days – the challenge is tough but gives you a unique glimpse into the lives of 1.4 billion people who live below the poverty line every day.

The Hunger Project (one of the main charity partners) is building a team of Live Below ambassadors/bloggers/participants to spread the word. If you are interested, get in touch with Mark.

You can take on the challenge at any time during the campaign window which…
Starts – Monday, March 03, 2014.
Ends – Sunday, June 29, 2014.

Most participants will take the challenge in the MAIN campaign week Monday 28 April to Friday 02 May.

Join the challenge – No signup or registration fees. £5 | 5 Days for all food and drink. Pre-register here http://eepurl.com/JTHa5

Registration opens in the spring. If you’re interested in taking part or building a team join this event page, invite your friends. If you’re interested in keeping in touch email mark.speirs@thp.org QUOTE: LBL14

http://www.thehungerproject.co.uk/getinvolved/live-below-the-line/

Mark Speirs
Marketing/Comms/Fundraising Manager
The Hunger Project UK

8th UK and Ireland Occupational & Environmental Epidemiology Meeting

Thursday 3 April 2014 – National Heart and Lung Institute (Imperial College), London SW3

Course description

Suitable for those with research interests in occupational and environmental epidemiology.  Early career researchers are particularly welcome.  Held each year from 2005, the aim is to enable cross-fertilization of research interests between those with an interest in occupational and environmental epidemiology.  Various topics are examined in a fairly informal environment, and encourage discussion and collaborative networking.

Registration details

Registration fee: £50; rising to £75 after ‘early bird’ closes on Friday 21 February (midnight).

Registration link Online Registration Form.  This form and the provisional programme, registration/abstract submission details, including the submission form, are accessed via our website: http://lungsatwork.org.uk/courses.php . Please complete and save the abstract submission form to your PC, and then e-mail it to Magda Wheatley at m.wheatley@imperial.ac.uk.

Keynote speakers

  • Mr Robie Kamanyire, Public Health England, will speak on the subject of shale gas extraction (also known as ‘fracking’).
  • Dr Ruth Travis, University of Oxford, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, will speak on the subject of shift work.
  • Dr Martie van Tongeren, Institute of Occupational Medicine, Edinburgh, will speak nanotechnology.

We are very grateful for the support of Public Health England and the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, and for the Colt Foundation’s endorsement of this meeting.

Magda Wheatley
Departmental Administrator
Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine – National Heart & Lung Institute

 

Academic Unit of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – January Update

Awards

European Psychiatric Association

Dr Mari Dominguez (Honorary Lecturer) was awarded the EPA Research Prize in the ‘Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’ category for the best scientific paper published in 2013, and will be attending the 22nd European Congress of Psychiatry in Munich in March.

Publications

A paper published by Dr Mari Dominguez (Dominguez, M-d-G., Fisher, HL., Major, B., Chisholm, B., et al (in press). Duration of untreated psychosis in adolescents: ethnic differences and clinical profiles. Schizophrenia Research, doi/10.1016/j.schres.2013.08.018)   garnered national press attention:

The Evening Standard (31.10.13) carried a piece on the study highlighting that the misattribution of symptoms to cannabis use rather than psychosis can lead to delays in adolescents getting the appropriate treatment.

Nicole Hickey
Academic Unit of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Professor Peter Barnes Awarded Honorary Doctorate

P BarnesProfessor Peter Barnes received an honorary doctorate from the University of Maastricht, Netherlands, on January 10th 2014.

As part of  Maastricht University’s celebration of  its 38th anniversary, or Dies Natalis, five ‘outstanding individuals’ – including Professor Barnes – received  honorary doctorates.  The event was marked, after two terms as vice-president of Maastricht Universit, by André Postema’s stepping down from its Executive Board, with a speech entitled ‘Maastricht University: a love story’.

The Global School Health and Nutrition Resource Relaunched

The global school health and nutrition resource schoolsandhealth.org, administered by Partnership for Child Development (PCD), was recently re-launched to further the reach of high quality School Health and Nutrition (SHN) documents, resources and news to the SHN community.

Improving the way news and information on the health, nutrition and education of school-age children around the world is disseminated remains as vital as ever. The new website allows quality assured, academically reviewed SHN resources, data and information to be distinguished from the multitude of information now available online; ensuring the SHN community has easy access to what they are looking for.” said PCD’s Executive Director, Lesley Drake.

schoolsandhealth.org was developed in 1998 in collaboration between: World Bank, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, UNICEF, PCD and other partners in response to a demand for a global online portal making SHN resources easily accessible to SHN interest groups, and in particular to policy makers and practitioners. The re-launched website continues to adhere to this demand; through its new and improved sections the website’s user friendliness, navigation and accessibility from internet searches is further ensured.

 

Selected New Website Features

 

 

Documents and Resource Centre:

The revitalised Documents and Resource Centre holds over an impressive 670 resources – twice as many relevant SHN relevant resources as previously displayed. These range in topic from: examples of good programming practice and policy, case studies, technical reviews, toolkits and guidelines, reports, surveys, advocacy tools and international declarations. Within the centre details including description, topic, title and author are outlined for each document allowing information to be easily viewed prior to download. Searches can also be categorized by SHN theme, language and year.
• Visit the Documents and Resource Centre

Updated Website Pages:

The website provides revamped pages for relevant school health topic areas including: helminth infectionsnutritionHIVwater, hygiene and sanitationacute respiratory infections and malaria. Reflecting  SHN expansion, the site now encompasses an inclusive education section.

News & Events Section:

Global and country specific school health news continues to be displayed in a new appealing format through the website’s news and events section holding almost 200 diverse SHN news articles which can be easily viewed collectively as well as in detail individually.
• Visit the News and Events Section

Visit schoolsandhealth.org to view all other features and the revitalised layout.

 

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

REF and all that…

Well, it’s over for another 6 years, all bar the shouting. The Faculty finally submitted its REF2014 return on 22 November well ahead of the November 29th deadline, along with the rest of the College.  The hard metrics show that we have returned 435 FTEs (representing 521 academics) across three Units of assessment:

  • UoA1 – Clinical medicine
  • UoA2 – Epidemiology and Public Health
  • UoA4 – Neurosciences.

We take this opportunity to thank all our academics, our impact case contributors, our Divisional administrators and their teams and our HoDs for their unswerving commitment and sheer hard work to make this such a strong return.

UoA1 is our largest return with 334 FTEs representing 406 academics, which is over 25% of the whole College in one single unit. There were 34 impact cases presented – whittled down by the Faculty REF Impact Committee (chaired by Deborah Ashby) from the >80 impacts which we initially reviewed. These impact cases are completely new to this year’s REF so we, and all our competitors, are working without any precedents to guide us. However, we were really impressed by the high quality of the translation of our research into new therapies, clinical guidelines and health policies. Given the size and ability of our Faculty, we have high hopes of a strong result in UoA1.

In the last RAE2008 exercise, our Dept of Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care was joint 1st nationally in its UoA with 33 FTEs returned. In REF2014, we have returned 55 FTEs in UoA2 (61 academics), and six impact cases. We believe that the quality of our outputs is as high as previously, and with two new MRC Centres, strong impact cases and the creation of the expanded School of Public Health, we hope and expect to equal our performance in this competitive area.

We have returned 44 FTEs (54 academics) in Neuroscience, representing the College and Faculty support for the rebuilding of this critical component of our research base in Medicine, under the leadership of Prof Paul Matthews. The three Neuroscience themes have each demonstrated critical mass, high quality outputs and compelling impact cases; we are optimistic that we shall exceed our performance in this UoA over RAE2008.

This REF return is very much a team effort involving the whole Faculty, but the contributions of Lyndsey Pallant and Sarah Perkins have been massive and this is an opportunity for the Faculty to thank them wholeheartedly for their skill and dedication.

The results of REF2014 will be public in December 2014; in the meanwhile my colleagues and I brace ourselves for the actual assessment process itself in the Spring.

Professor Jonathan Weber
Vice Dean
 (Research)
Faculty of Medicine

Professor John Warner Awarded OBE at Windsor Palace

Prof J O Warner OBEProfessor John Warner, a consultant paediatrician at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, was awarded his OBE at Windsor Castle on 22 November. Speaking at his Investiture, Professor Warner said he was honoured to receive the award.

“It was unexpected and unasked for. I feel very flattered and honoured that my research and the research of my team has been recognised in this way.”

Professor Warner has been involved in food allergy research over the past 25 years. His research has focused on the early life origins of asthma and related allergic and respiratory disorders. He is currently working on a programme to improve knowledge and co-ordinate the management of children with allergies in general practices, nurseries, schools and home.

Student facility upgrades

Over the summer, a number of upgrades have taken place to improve the student and staff facilities across our campuses.

Charing Cross

The Reynolds Café and Reynolds bar have been completely refurbished – a much needed modernisation to support our students and staff at this site.

Reynolds Bar

Reynolds Cafe

Reynolds Gym

The Gym facilities at this campus have also been upgraded providing better fitness facilities for our staff and students.  This also includes the Energia Strength and Conditioning Room which includes state-of-the-art facilities for students who want to maximise their athletic performance.

Hammersmith

Over at the Hammersmith campus, a complete refurbishment of the 3rd floor has taken place along with teaching labs, student common room and computer lab.

Seminar rooms in the sub-basement have also been upgraded and modernised to provide a better lecturing space.

Other upgrades:

We are continually improving the student and staff experience across the Faculty. A number of other areas have seen upgrades:

Partnership for Child Development October update

1st Francophone SHN Course Opens in Senegal

Organised by the Partnership for Child Development, Institute of Health and Development (ISED) and the University of Dakar the first Francophone School Health and Nutrition (SHN) was opened in Senegal on Monday. The course will host government representatives from 13 African Francophone countries, who for 10 days will focus on supporting effective SHN intervention delivery.

Opening the ceremony, Professor Anta Tal Dia, Director of ISED addressed participants, “The consensus is unanimous, it is essential to ensure good school health and nutrition if we want to see high educational achievement.”

Read more about the Course.

 

School meals can do more than just feed children

Each year on 16 October World Food Day aims to increase understanding of problems and solutions in the drive to end hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Over the years the day has taken on various themes which have focused on investing in agriculture and recently focus has been drawn on health and education too.

One solution which countries have put in place to combat hunger and poverty is to provide free school meals to their schoolchildren. Through school feeding programmes countries see results – results in terms of happier, healthier and better educated kids. The evidence base shows that school feeding increases pupil enrolment, improves retention and that educational outcomes improve as children are able to concentrate better and ultimately enter adult life better equipped.

Increasingly countries are beginning to realise that school feeding can do more than just benefit school children. By procuring their food locally school feeding programmes can support marginalised smallholder farmers by providing them with a constant stable market to sell to; increasing profits for smallholder farmers whilst at the same time providing fresh and nutritious local food to school meals.

Read more in the article School meals can do more than just feed children

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

From the Dean of the Faculty

Dear Colleagues,

Imperial College has figured at No 4 globally in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings in the Category of Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health, a rise of one place since 2012. This is excellent news and reflects strongly on the quality of our faculty and on the sustained excellence of the research and teaching at Imperial College. So thanks to all of you for helping to deliver this remarkable achievement which clearly reflects an extraordinary body of work. Every small contribution helps – from taking extra time over a worried student to discovery of a new pathway relevant to human disease or in translating research into policy.  The ability to translate does appear to be an important theme in this category with important implications in enhancing reputation.  We have a wonderful research eco-system in the Faculty of Medicine that enables us to convert our discoveries into real benefits for patients through our partnerships in the AHSC and the AHSN.

This theme of translation is also followed through in the Life Sciences table with Harvard ranked at No 1. The Citation in THE interestingly cites Harvard’s ability to accelerate the pathway from discovery to product through the Harvard Biomedical Accelerator Fund and the capacity to rapidly move from test-tube to clinic as a key factor in its success. As we look to the future with development of Imperial West looming on the horizon, there may be important pointers for us here in terms of our translational strategy. How we develop strategically with our international partners may be key to moving further ahead in the University rankings in the future.

Professor Dermot Kelleher MD FRCPI FRCP F MedSci AGAF
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine

ICT Communications update

mobilEcho – Access Files on the Move

 

Our ICT department has introduced an app, called mobilEcho, that allows staff and students to connect securely to their ‘home’ directory (H drive) and SharePoint using mobile devices such as phones and tablets, both on and off campus. The software is free to use, and supported on both Android and Apple devices.

Find out more about MobilEcho. Queries can be directed to Michael Lynn by email.

Improving wireless access across NHS sites

 

For academics, wireless eduroam access has now been expanded to cover all five main NHS Trust Hospital sites. The roaming service allows staff from participating institutions to use their ‘.ac.uk’ email addresses to gain wireless access to the Imperial College network, and to networks at other participating institution’s sites. For more details on eduroam see http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ict/services/networks/roaming

A new wireless system (ICHT-Green) is also now available (from 30th September) offering excellent coverage across Hammersmith and Queen Charlotte’s Hospital buildings for all staff using Trust-owned, Windows-based laptops (not tablets or mobile phones).

This work is part of the Trust’s commitment to support and enhance the experiences of Imperial College and other academics across all Hospital sites.

Laura Gates
ICT Communications Manager
Imperial College London

Partnership for Child Development September update

Applications open for the 3rd Asia SHN Training Course

 

Following the success of the 2nd School Health & Nutrition (SHN) Training Course for government, United Nations and civil society staff in the Asian region earlier this year, PCD are delighted to announce that applications are now open for the 3rd Asia SHN Training Course.

Held at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and jointly hosted by the Thai Ministries of Education and Health between 2 -10 December 2013, the course will cover a broad range of topics in the field of SHN and will focus on the key issue of malnutrition; looking at the double burden of stunting and wasting, and under-nutrition among children as well as the growing issue of child obesity in Asia.

Read more on the 3rd Asia SHN Training Course

PCD supports Kenyan Ministries of Education and Health to carry out national training for school meals programme

 

In order to strengthen the implementation of Kenya’s Home Grown School Meals (HGSM) programme, PCD recently supported Kenya’s ministries of education and health to deliver national training to school feeding implementers across 70 counties and sub-counties in Kenya.

The initial phase of training was carried out among a total of 345 heads and directors from education, health and agriculture county departments, to enhance the role of Kenya’s decentralized regions in the programme and to increase the involvement of the programme’s supply chain beneficiaries. The second phase of training, carried out in July and August saw over 3,400 participants targeted from 1717 schools, provided the opportunity for teachers from beneficiary schools to share experiences and challenges in school feeding delivery.

Find out more

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

Partnership for Child Development August update

Dubai documentary

 

In May 2012, Partnership for Child Development (PCD) were filmed by Dubai documentary makers on their role in Ghana’s Home Grown School Feeding programme (GSFP).

The documentary series, entitled Sanad, began airing during Ramadan last month, with the GSFP featured in episode one. The series featured projects funded by philanthropic organisation Dubai Cares, which included Home Grown School Feeding programmes supported by PCD and its partners in both Ghana and Ethiopia.

In episode one, PCD’s West Africa Regional Director, Daniel Mumuni, outlined PCD’s role in the programme alongside the aims of HGSF programmes; to support child health, nutrition and education, at the same time as promoting local livelihoods.

M&E Guidance for School Health Programmes

 

As part of ongoing efforts to provide internationally-agreed guidance on how to monitor and evaluate school health programmes, the Focused Resources of Effective School Health (FRESH) partners havedeveloped Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Guidance for School Health Programmes.

Partnership for Child Development,  alongside numerous individuals and organisations, have input support, advice, and insight into this publication over the past five years. With its set of recommended indicators, this FRESH M&E Guidance intends to help programmes in low and middle-income countries ensure their implementation is more standardised and evidence-based.

Further information on the M&E Guidance

 

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

PhD student awarded Ruth Bowden Scholarship

Dr Naomi Walker, a PhD student from the Department of Medicine, has been awarded the Ruth Bowden Scholarship (£5000) for her work on “Defining mechanisms of tissue destruction in TB and TB immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (TB-IRIS)”. The scholarship is part of the  British Federation of Women Graduates Scholarship Awards 2013,  which provides prizes for academic excellence to female PhD students in their final year.

Naomi’s success follows last year’s, where two Imperial students; Stephanie Walton and Lucy Thorne, also won awards.

Dr Alexandra Blakemore
Faculty of Medicine Ambassador for Women

The Great Debate 2013 – Raising Standards in Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

On the 20th and 21st June, the MSk Lab ran the Great Debate for the second time after taking the gauntlet on from industry who had organised it in previous years. Professor Cobb is one of the founders of the meeting 7 years ago and chaired the event since its inception – so last year it was great to finally bring it in house.

The Great Debate is a two day interactive conference which gives the attendees opportunities to vote on topical issues in hip and knee arthroplasty, as well as question the faculty on controversial themes in the session debates. Last year the time of year it was held changed as well as a move of venue to The Mermaid Conference Centre. 2013 also brought some changes – the avatar/logo was given a new lease of life and breakout sessions run by industry were added each day. We had the support of 19 Industry sponsors, a 25 strong international faculty with renowned speakers joining us from; Australia, USA, Germany, Italy and the UK.

“The big issues debated this year included hip bearings, and partial knee replacements competing with top of the range total knees. In the hip bearing debate, ceramics were clear winners, although interestingly resurfacing is not dead. Almost 80% of the surgeons thought there was still a place for the procedure, and accepted the functional gains that it brought.

In the knee debate, huge interest was found in the compartmental knee approach, with most speakers expressing dissatisfaction at the joint registry and its inability to report poorly functioning but unrevised total knees”

Having almost finished dotting all the t’s and crossing all the I’s to finalise this year’s event, we may just have time for a cuppa before starting to plan The Great Debate 2014. With such good feedback – how could we not!

“I have attended three times since 2006, I think this is the best joint arthroplasty meeting in the UK”

Tweet us or follow us @Great_Debate_UK, which we will be using to try and keep some debate going, accept suggestions as to topics for discussion, and provide details of who to expect to see, where and when in 2014.

Zoe Williams
Public Engagement and Patient Involvement Manager
MSk Lab

Holographic Assisted Lecturing in Orthopaedics


Dr Kapil Sugand graduated from Imperial College in 2010 with an intercalated BSc in Surgery and Anaesthesia. Alongside his clinical training, Dr Sugand is currently pursuing a PhD in surgical trauma simulation and educational technology under the supervision of Mr Gupte and Professor Cobb in the MSk Lab. As part of his studies, he is currently conducting research with multi-disciplinary team within a number of multimedia modalities to train safer surgeons and to ultimately enhance patient safety. He is the Co-Founder and Co-chair of the Holography Assisted Medical Learning and E-Teaching (HAMLET) group which has created quite a media buzz due to the innovative ground breaking research and has been covered by:

It is a really interesting and exciting project to be working on, not only because of the academics involved, but also due to the scope this application has if proved a valuable and reliable teaching channel. The initial study was conducted on students, giving them an enhanced learning experience from which objective and subjective feedback was collated to assess the impact and value of holography-assisted lecturing. It will be interesting to see if this new learning experience will actually become the ‘gold-standard’ in levels of teaching/presenting.”, Dr Sugand commented.

The team are not just looking at the impact this has on graduate teaching but how it can be used in the wider medical world too. Holograms have the power to visually communicate with greater immersive impact than other presentation modalities so it may facilitate patients being able to understand the disease process and management options more effectively. Something to watch for the future; but we could see holography used as a means of patient engagement, improving compliance to management and being part of the ‘pre-habilitation’ phase of enhanced recovery programmes.

Zoe Williams
Public Engagement and Patient Involvement Manager
MSk Lab

Partnership for Child Development July update

WFP, World Bank & PCD launch first of its kind report in US

Approximately 169 developing and developed countries invest in school feeding programmes worldwide, an investment which equates to approximately US$ 75 billion, and which for the most part comes from government budgets.

This was just one key finding from the recently published report, State of School Feeding Worldwide, which provides for the first time a global picture and analysis of school feeding programmes, and which was officially launched in the US yesterday, by WFP, World Bank and Partnership for Child Development (PCD).

Speaking on the report’s significance lead author Carmen Burbano said, “The report provides the first ever map of school feeding showing that most countries around the world, whether in high, low or middle income countries are implementing school feeding as a social safety net in times of crisis”.

Find out more.

9th African School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Course

Partnership for Child Development (PCD) recently co-organised the 9th African School Health and Nutrition (SHN) Course, where over 50 attendees inclusive of representatives from ministries of health, education, agriculture, gender and social development across 12 African countries were hosted by the Ghanaian Government to focus on best practice in SHN programme interventions.

Comprehensive SHN programmes address challenges negatively impacting on child health, such interventions include HIV/AIDS prevention, malaria and parasitic worm treatment, control and prevention, and nutritional deficiencies such as iron-deficient anaemia and short-term hunger through school feeding. Throughout the course these intervention areas were focused on through a range of presentations, break-out sessions, expertly facilitated lectures and field visits.

Useful course links

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

A role for a tumour suppressor in prostate gland architecture

Disorganised region of a prostate gland
Disorganised region of a prostate gland from a Dkk-3 mutant mouse showing E-cadherin in green, ZO1 in red and nuclei in blue

Researchers from the Department of Surgery and Cancer have uncovered a novel link between the tumour suppressor Dickkopf-3 (Dkk-3) and TGF-β signalling. The team previously found that Dkk-3 is required for human prostate epithelial cells to form acinar structures in 3D matrigel cultures; an in vitro model for prostate gland development.

This new study, carried out in collaboration with the Centre for Cooperative Research in Biosciences (CIC bioGUNE) in Bilbao and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, shows that Dkk-3 limits epithelial cell proliferation in 3D cultures and during mouse prostate gland development. It is well known that TGF-β signals go awry during cancer progression; switching from tumour suppression to tumour promotion. This study shows that loss of Dkk-3 activates TGF-β signalling – inhibition of which rescues the 3D phenotype.

The results provide further support and rationale for the use of TGF-β inhibitors to treat prostate cancer. They may also be relevant to other cancers, such as those of the breast and the ovary, where similar changes in Dkk-3 and the TGF-β response take place. The studies at Imperial were carried out by Diana Romero and Yoshiaki Kawano, now at Kumamoto University in Japan, and were funded by a Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Project Grant awarded to Robert Kypta and Jonathan Waxman.

The work is published in the Journal of Cell Science.

Dr Robert M Kypta
Lecturer in Prostate Cancer
Department of Surgery & Cancer