By Kimberley-Ann Kerr, Lyell McEwin Hospital, Australia
The Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA) is a multidisciplinary society for health professionals whose work involves the care of cancer patients. An Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) is held each November, and the 2019 ASM was held in sunny Adelaide, South Australia, at the Adelaide Convention Centre. The theme for the ASM was ‘Putting Precision and Personalisation into Practice’ and focussed on urogenital cancers, age and gender in cancer practice, and digital health in cancer.
On Monday, 11th November, the Cancer Pharmacists Group (CPG) kicked off with a Pre-ASM workshop. After a slightly later start to the day due to scheduling issues, pharmacists were given an update on renal cell cancers by a local oncologist, Dr Ganessan Kichenadasse. This was followed up with a very interesting session on real world data and real world evidence, and how pharmacists can get involved.
The next session focussed on pharmacokinetics – personalisation vs generalisation. Four speakers spoke on different considerations when dosing cancer therapy – flat dosing, dosing in obesity, TDM in paediatric patients, and pharmacokinetics in the elderly cancer patient.
Following this was an ISOPP session! The first topic was presented by our international invited speaker – none other than ISOPP president Alex Chan, who gave an update on biosimilars and the ISOPP position statement. I followed this up by giving an update on the recent ISOPP symposium in London, to give Australian pharmacists a taste of what to expect at a symposium and hopefully encourage them to come to future events.
The day finished up with four short presentations followed by a panel discussion on cancer services – credentialing, training and emerging roles for clinical pharmacists. Speakers represented public hospital services in SA and Queensland, private hospital services nationwide, and Singapore. This session was the highlight of the day as it was interesting to see what is being done around the country and internationally, and what challenges each area experience. It facilitated sharing of ideas and generated a lot of discussion about what can be done in the future.
The ASM commenced on Tuesday, 12th November. This was a largely clinical day, with each session containing an update on urogenital cancers. The day commenced with an opening plenary on prostate cancer prescription for the 21st century. This was a multi-disciplinary session which spoke on active surveillance, radiation therapy, ADT and supportive care. This was followed by concurrent sessions. The program this year was so interesting it was incredibly difficult to choose which session to go to at each concurrent session! I chose to keep in with the theme of clinical updates and attended the session on optimising management of bladder/urological cancer in the frail elderly.
Over lunch, the CPG AGM was held, which facilitated all pharmacist attendees to meet and discuss the activities of the CPG over the year, and the plan for the year to come. Following this was afternoon tea in the poster exhibits. The final concurrent session of the day was held, and I attended the ‘Global Oncology: An Asia-Pacific regional perspective’ which looked at establishing and contributing to cancer services in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This was incredibly interesting and inspiring and left me wanting to find out how I can get involved in assisting in cancer services in developing countries! I highly recommend looking into this.
The day finished with drinks and canapes amongst the poster exhibits.
The second day of the ASM commenced with a plenary on using digital technology as a clinical tool. Given the advances in technology and what is available now, this was an important session to know what is available, how to use it, and what challenges it brings. This was followed by concurrent sessions, which included ‘Medicine Matters’ – the yearly session put on by the CPG. This session focussed on health literacy, and in keeping with the conference theme, speakers spoke on health literacy across different ages. There were presentations on paediatrics, AYA (another session by Alex Chan), geriatrics, and then a session on mastering patient education by Lisa McLean from EviQ Education. EviQ is run through the cancer institute of NSW but is used nationally and includes treatment protocols, patient information, and education. This session was well attended and generated excellent discussion with a panel at the end. Many practical tips on how to educate patients, particularly different groups that have challenges associated with them, were given.
The next session was a plenary MDT discussion, entitled ‘A couple armed with an iPad’. Bogda Koczwara, the conference convenor, opened the plenary with a case based on a true case she had been involved in, and then opened up discussion amongst the multidisciplinary panel and the audience. The challenges of the digital age were discussed, and tips given on how to manage expectations of patients given emails enable access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
After another poster viewing session, further concurrent sessions were held. I attended a session about rural cancer care. Australia is a huge country and many towns are geographically isolated. This brings challenges on how to adequately treat patients, as patients tend to have better outcomes if they are treated close to home. However, this is not always possible. The session had excellent speakers who discussed ways they have been involved in getting patients treated closer to home, and the challenges that are still faced.
The day ended with the conference dinner, which was held in the Panorama room which overlooks the Torrens river which runs through Adelaide, and Adelaide Oval, where sporting events such as cricket and football (Aussie Rules!) are held.
The final day of the ASM commenced with a plenary looking at personalising cancer care at the population level. This was followed by concurrent sessions. One of the sessions focussed on integrating genetic testing into cancer care, which is a rapidly expanding and interesting field. After lunch there was an interesting hot topic panel discussion on health professionals – do we practice what we preach? This was followed by the final session of the ASM, the presidential lecture. This year, delegates were treated to a session and performance by Kirk Pengilly of INXS.
Overall, the ASM was of high quality and left delegates with many things to think on to implement in their daily practice. The ASM in 2020 will be in Brisbane and should be an excellent event – I encourage anyone who can to attend (and for those of you who don’t live in Australia, Brisbane is lovely!).
