Pre-meeting workshop

JITMM 2022 will organize workshops the day before the conference. Read more about the details of each workshop, including the topic agenda, potential speakers, and registration fees in this page.

Please note that the registration for pre-meeting workshop and JITMM conference is done separately. Attending JITMM is not required to register for the pre-meeting workshop.

Date: 6 December 2022
Time: 9.00hr – 17.00hr (GMT +7)
Venue: Montien Hotel Surawong, Bangkok, Thailand

Workshop 1: Ethics review of emerging technologies and innovative treatments

New types of interventions, such as cell based and gene therapies, or interventions using organs or cells from animals or artificial intelligence, promise to transform medicine. Many of these also raise worries about ethics, from concerns about exposing research subjects or patients to excessive risks, to worries about long-term social consequences if they are accepted and widely used. The ordinary research ethics review system may not be able to review such interventions adequately, because of lack of expertise, both about their risks, but also a lack of mandate to review long-term consequences of adoption. Special, often national, review procedures have been proposed, and also adopted by some countries for some of these types of procedures. Other options include using already established review procedures for new drugs by drug regulatory authorities. Gene therapies and xenotransplantation procedures may for example be reviewed by drug regulatory authorities before authorization is given. But it is also not clear if this mechanism is adequate. 

The aim of this session is the examine the proposed and/or adopted review procedures for such emerging technologies in different countries. These may be for a specific, new intervention such as the pluripotent stem cell transplant for age related macular degeneration in Japan or for groups of interventions, such as rules of “high-risk biomedical technologies” in China, which would include gene editing technologies. Based on these country presentations, there will be a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches.

In addition, the session will also attempt to introduce a more general framework for the evaluation of emerging technologies. Common to many of them is that these technologies are experimental, in the sense that their benefits and risks are not completely documented, but the target patients do not have any existing, proven beneficial, alternatives. There is therefore an expectation that the new intervention may also benefit the experimental patient. In this regard, there are similarities with phase I oncology trials, or trials using existing, approved drugs for new uses. The session will introduce a general framework for evaluating such “innovative treatments”. 

This one-day workshop, jointly organized by Mahidol University Faculty of Tropical Medicine and US NIH Department of Bioethics will examine issues related to research ethics review of such emerging technologies. Experts from NIH and Thailand will discuss these issues with invited comments from neighboring countries and regions, such as Singapore, China and Japan. 

Attendees of the EC workshop will be able to attend virtually the sessions “Ethical review of biobank and registry research” and “IT and Tropmed” at JITMM 2022 conference for free. 

Draft Agenda

8:30 Welcome and Introduction

• Christine Grady, Department of Bioethics, NIH (Online)
• TBA, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University

8:45 Innovative treatment – Treatment or Research?

• Reidar Lie. Risk judgments in phase I oncology trials
• David Wendler, NIH. Proposal for review of “innovative treatments”

10:30 Discussion

11:00 Break

11:30 Perspectives from China, Japan, Singapore

• Review procedures for emerging technologies
• TBA Kenji Matsui, Zhai Xiaomei, Calvin Ho

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Ethics review of Emerging Technologies in Thailand: Issues

TBA

15:00 Discussion

15:30 Break

16:00 Concluding Panel discussion

17:00 End of workshop

*Hybrid registration fee includes lunch and snacks

The deadline for registration for pre-meeting workshop is one week before the workshop date, 30 November 2022. On the day registration payment will not be accepted.

Register here

Workshop 2: Advanced Information Technology for Mosquito Vector Monitoring and Control

Accurate and timely data on mosquito vector populations is essential to effective prevention and control of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue. Recent developments in information technology, including sensor networks, TinyML, and image processing provide new opportunities to conduct vector monitoring at unprecedented scales and frequencies. In addition, mobile and cloud platforms enable integrating vector counts with other data to provide a timely and informative picture of disease transmission dynamics. The objective of this workshop is to explore these opportunities and communicate initial results and plans. It is designed to be highly interdisciplinary, including computer scientists, epidemiologists, entomologists, and disease modelers.

Topics include:

• Mosquito vector sensor design, including but not limited to acoustic, opto-acoustic, and image-based approaches
• Mosquito vector population estimation techniques based on related data, including satellite imaging, street-view images, and environmental data
• Data collection for machine learning approaches
• Sensing strategies – what exactly should we be measuring?
• Networking, data transmission, and power issues
• Lessons from traditional approaches that can inform sensor design
• Transmission and presentation of vector count data and integration with other relevant data

Format: The workshop will include talks, panel sessions, and ample time for discussion. The workshop will be run in hybrid mode to facilitate participation from abroad. 

Speakers: Speakers and panelists will include the following persons, as well as a selection of those who register.

• Saranath Lawpoolsri, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University
• Patchara Sriwichai, Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University
• Peter Haddawy, Faculty of ICT, Mahidol University
• Myat Su Yin, Faculty of ICT, Mahidol University
• Akara Supratak, Faculty of ICT, Mahidol University
• Dolvara Gunatilaka, Faculty of ICT, Mahidol University
• Anna Förster, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Bremen
• Thomas Barkowsky, Faculty of Informatics, University of Bremen

*Hybrid registration fee includes lunch and snacks

The deadline for registration for pre-meeting workshop is one week before the workshop date, 30 November 2022. On the day registration payment will not be accepted.
Register here