How was the ISLH 2019 meeting planned?
The 2019 meeting in Vancouver, Canada, was planned as a collaboration between ISLH, NASCOLA, CAP and CHS. The original meeting selection was voted on by the ISLH Board of Directors after consideration of several cities and partnering hematology organizations. An agreement was negotiated between ISLH and the collaborating societies, including financial, administrative, and personnel matters. Meeting logistics are handled by SPLtrak.
For ISLH 2019, the Program Directors (PD) are Tracy George and John Frater. The program Co-Chairs are Parul Bhargava, Ruth Padmore and Dot Adcock. Abstract Co-chairs include Albert Huisman, Richard Marlar and Cathy Ross. In 2018, members of the scientific committees were confirmed; each scientific committee includes a chair and vice-chair with a membership term of 3 years.
The scientific committees were asked to submit nominations for speakers for the meeting, including plenary speakers and concurrent sessions in their area of expertise. It was recommended that speakers be experts in their respective field with excellent publications and that someone on the committee would have heard that person speak before. Geographic locations of speakers were also considered as this meeting is in Canada. After speaker names were submitted, the Co-Chairs, Program Director, and Scientific Committee Chairs had conference calls to discuss speaker selection for all sessions. Members of the ISLH Executive Committee also participated in these meetings. Speakers were invited and confirmed. Session chairs were selected primarily from the Scientific Committees by the meeting Co-Chairs, Program Director, and Executive Committee.