The weekend of October 6 I was invited to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Conference and Exhibition. This conference was held in the lovely city of Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC) and attended by close to 40,000 pediatricians, pediatric specialists and practitioners and device manufacturers and vendors.
I was invited to discuss the possibilities of developing a peer review system similar to the TeleCAM system for child abuse diagnosis that contains additional roles and access for law enforcement and social services. Throughout the conference there were opportunities to discuss the challenges in child abuse diagnosis, especially the challenge of peer review, training of medical staff in Children's Advocacy Centers and Children's Justice Centers and standards to provide oversight and support of activities related to child abuse medical assessment.
The conference was stimulating from the educational perspective and the fact that I was able to meet so many really committed people in pediatrics. In addition, the exhibition provided the opportunity to review the types of medical devices that deal specifically with imaging in pediatrics.
One such imaging device was the RetCam II by Clarity Medical. Retcam II is a device that captures pediatric retinal images. The images are high quality and provide a detailed examination of the retina to determine eye disease in premature infants or retinal haemorrhage in shaken baby syndrome. Since the retinas display certain characteristics of detachment and the detection of the retinal detachment is a primary method of determining if a child has been exposed to shaking, the Retcam II provides definitive proof for medical examiners.
From the non clinician perspective, I managed to take away a great deal of knowledge from this conference and will make every effort to attend next year,