Many of us in the industry attend annual meetings in our specialty area thus the regular conference season is full of events such as the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), American Society of Hematology (ASH), American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO), San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) etc for just a few of the big American meetings in oncology, to say nothing of their European counterparts or similar meetings in other disease states. 

It's no wonder that with thousands attending these meetings, people (health care professionals and consultants alike!) become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data and information available.

One of the things I really enjoy though, is the smaller, more intimate meetings either focused on the local needs or around a more specific topic such as an individual cancer (World Lung Congress, Miami Breast Cancer meeting and the International Society for Gastrointestinal Oncology); all are excellent meetings for getting a snapshot around more specialist areas, for example.

However, my favourite little conference outside of ASH, ASCO and AACR is the New York Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium held annually in November at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.  For those interested, it was started by Dr Ezra Greenspan:

"Dr. Greenspan was the pioneering oncologist who founded The Chemotherapy Foundation in 1968 and the Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium in 1972 in order to bring the new developments in cancer therapeutics to practicing oncologists in the years ahead. His goal was the control and eventual cure of cancer."

Times Square (NYC)Image by Michael McDonough via Flickr

From my perspective, the meeting offers lots of little snapshots and vignettes on the cutting edge data that will impact community medical oncology either now or in the near future.  They invite a lot of the experts running the trials from around the country, so you get a great sense of what's happening in areas you may be less familiar with as the program shows.  In the past, some of the keynote speeches have also been great fun and quite irreverent, which also means you tend to remember the important data better.

The Greenspan meeting is being held at Times Square in NY next week, so I'll be live tweeting key snippets from the event from Tues to Friday under the hashtag #NYCT. 

If anyone is either at the meeting or in NY and wants to meetup for coffee, lunch or dinner for some social networking, do let me know.  You can tweet me @maverickNY and I'll be sure to return your shout out.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]