This week I’m at two conferences so I thought I’d have a quick chat about them. 

The first is about pathogenomics and is in Liverpool. It feeds nicely into my research and will be the first one I’ve been to set up from a clinical perspective mostly so I’ve been looking forward to it. Turns out I understand quite a bit and even felt I could contribute too. 

Those of you that have read my other posts know that this is where the future is heading in Microbiology- sequencing of microbes to know what they are and their resistances. We’re probably still a long way off but it was brilliant to hear about how the NHS is considering incorporating these advances in technology for Whole Genome Sequencing: albeit at the moment probably for cancers more than infection. However, there was lots of fascinating stuff on data mining what public health is already collecting and more on the importance of bioinformatics. It spurred me on further with my goal to want to do this and I’ll be looking up Bash the Bug too! 

Come Wednesday I’ll be at the British Infection Association Conference. I LOVE conferences. It’s a great and sociable way of learning new information and meeting people in your field. I’m looking forward to hearing more about PrEP and HIV as well as from other clinicians looking at the gut microbiome and I’ll be sure to let you know about particularly interesting stuff when I can. 

A lot of my consultant went to the ECCMID conference this year and there are web links to a lot of the talks. I’m going to sit and binge watch some lectures during this week and next I think and I’ll put up links to and discuss interesting ones with you. 

In between all this I’m also back in the lab tomorrow and in clinical work on Friday! 

Are you guys off to any conferences? Let me know below. 👇