2003. Ninth ECMM/1st TIMM Congress (Amsterdam)

July 17, 2008 – 16:09 — ECMM Website Editor

From September 28 to October 1, 2003, for the first time the ECMM Congress (9th ECMM) was convened jointly with EORTC’s Trends in Invasive Fungal Infections Conference (7th TIFI), resulting in 1st TIMM: Trends In Medical Mycology.
1st TIMM Congress gathered 930 participants from 70 countries.
Organizers for ECMM: J. F. Meis , S. de Hoog

Organizers for EORTC: B. de Pauw, B-J. Kullberg

From Mycology Newsletter 2004, P. 1-3

… the meeting in Amsterdam was a great success by any criterion. The number of people attending exceeded that of the ISHAM Congress held in May, 2003.The feedback from the participants was uniformly positive, both about the quality of the scientific presentations and the social activities. The high number of industry- sponsored symposia was a reflection of the currently huge interest in novel antifungal agents.

Jacques Meis and his colleagues in the Netherlands put together a truly superb meeting: one that will be remembered for many years. There are very many scientific/ medical congresses; some say too many! By combining the ECMM congress with the biennial TIFI meeting, the two organizations optimized the costs of attendance and benefited from attracting delegates from two different (though partly overlapping) constituencies.

You may download the file with TIMM 2003 abstracts from the link below.

The Amsterdam experience shows that we can reduce two meetings to one with great success. Your Committee has therefore decided to continue the practice of holding congresses jointly with TIFI every two years. If we are to make the subsequent joint congresses as attractive as the one in Amsterdam we feel it is important to change the style of meetings held by the ECMM.
From Mycology Newsletter 2004, P. 4

The 1st Trends in Medical Mycology 2003 was a great success, with 950 scientific participants from over 50 countries in the world. This joint meeting has become the largest international meeting in the field of medical mycology worldwide. Most participants were impressed with the excellent presentations by the invited speakers. The authors of more than 300 submitted abstracts contributed to lively poster and free paper sessions. The social activities were well chosen and adapted to Amsterdam, especially the exclusive opening ceremony at the Van Gogh Museum.

The day before the conference, the Fungal Biodiversity Center, Utrecht (CBS) organised a well-attended hands-on workshop on new and emerging pathogens. The Sunday started with meetings of the ECMM board and the EORTC Invasive Fungal Infections Group. The plenary key-note lecture was delivered by Prof. James Anderson, Toronto on the adaptation of Candida albicans to antifungals, followed by Prof. Frank Odds, chairman of ECMM, who memorised Prof. Glyn Evans in a very impressive way. The Drouhet lecture was delivered by Prof. Ben de Pauw who combined science and emotion in an excellent presentation stressing the need for a continued search for evidence-based medical interventions.

The audience was enthusiastic to participate in 3 well-attended clinical symposia with an interactive voting system.The organisers of these interactive clinical symposia had gathered very challenging clinical cases. After the meeting, a questionnaire was sent out to all participants.95% of the responders were satisfied with the scientific (educational) information of the congress, and 92% found the information useful for their daily practice. 98% responded that the meeting was well organized. 56% is planning to join the 10th ECMM Congress in Wroclaw, Poland, 2004 and 85% the 2nd TIFI-ECMM joint meeting in Berlin, 2005. 70% of the responders prefer a bi-annual Trends in Medical Mycology Meeting.