Question:

After reading the last CCS newsletter I have a question for the ICCS leadership.  Recently CCS got renamed ICCS, yet the next 4 meetings are being held in the U.S.  Why the American centric meeting planning when the goal behind the name change is to be recognized as an international society?

Bruce H. Davis, MD
Founding Board member and Past President, CCS

Response:
An excellent question.  There are a variety of ways in which the organization can be international.  One model would be, as you imply, to have a single organization that holds an annual meeting at one location that moves around the world, this is similar to ISAC or ISLH.  However, there are a few problems relative to the clinical cytometry community that make this difficult.  The first is that a significant percentage of the ICCS membership and attendees at the annual meeting are technical staff who would not have the resources to attend an international meeting.   Holding an ICCS meeting out of North America would pretty much guarantee a reduced attendance consisting largely of physicians, outside of the those in the local region where the meeting is held.  There also are multiple regional clinical cytometry organizations that compete with ICCS for both membership and meeting attendance.  Finally, in the clinical arena there are country and region specific regulations and reimbursement concerns that are difficult to integrate into a single meeting.  Taken together, these issues suggest significant financial and political challenges in holding a successful international clinical cytometry meeting.  If ICCS was to integrate with ESCCA, the Caribbean society, the Indian Society, etc., it might be more feasible, although this would still guarantee that technical staff in any region would only be able to attend a meeting once every few years.

Another model would be to foster the growth of regional clinical cytometry societies, but facilitate interaction through ICCS. This would allow for multiple regional meetings a year that would encourage attendance by local technical staff and allow regional issues to be addressed.  In this model, ICCS would serve both as the North American regional society, which is largely what it has been historically, and as an integrating organization.  Why ICCS?  In large part because the merger of CCS with the Clinical Cytometry Foundation (CCF) provides the organization with funds targeted to foster the development of clinical cytometry activities internationally.  A related issue is that meetings are a somewhat limited way to reach the international community.  A more effective method for international engagement would be the production and dissemination of educational materials via the internet.  This would allow anyone anywhere to benefit from information beyond what meetings or courses can provide. ICCS and its Educational Committee chaired by Fiona Craig are actively working on implementing this vision.

Brent Wood MD PhD
Professor, Laboratory Medicine
Director, Hematopathology Laboratory
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
E-mail: woodbl@u.washington.edu  Phone:(206) 288-7117  FAX: (206) 288-7127



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