Letter 13, March 21, 2008

Dear Colleagues

Even though my last official letter was sent out seven months ago, I have met most of you more recently in the several activities we have during this period of time!
The life of our society has been increasingly interesting during the last years! Thanks to the efforts of all of you we can say that a lot of work have been done!
To summazise our work:

1) Document on “Core Competences in Genetics for Health Professionals in Europe”
- The background document was discussed for the first time in 2006 at the workshop in Porto (September 23-24)
- A few months later the first draft document was produced and put on the web for consultation.
- Because of previous contacts with the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) I presented the document during the plenary session at their 2007 Conference in Trondheim, Norway, 27-29 August.

- The document was also presented at the “1st Workshop in Genetics and Public Health for Developing Countries" Latin American Networks - 17th and 18th of September 2007. Guayaquil, Ecuador.

- There was further discussion on this topic during in the meeting in Sils Maria, Switzerland, on September 20-21, 2007, with Irma Nippert and Joerg Schmidtke to integrate the document with results from the work done by the GenEd project.

- All the comments received during the year were included and the second draft was discussed at the Milan meeting (October 27-28, 2007)

- The final document, completely revised after the Milan meeting, is now on the web for the final consultation. The document has been divided in four separate smaller documents. (http://www.eurogentest.org/web/info/public/unit6/core_competences.xhtml)

2) Partnership in the EUROGENE project
- The ESHG was been asked to be a partner in the EC proposal of EUROGENE project, coordinated by EGF (www.eurogene.eu).
- The EUROGENE project objective is to migrate towards more efficient development of higher quality (multimedia) didactic material on genetics. This is being done by the guided editing and “assembly” of educational packages based on the IMS learning design metadata framework and the sharing of different types of “learning objects” between content owners, in 9 languages.
- The project proposes to share materials by establishing the EUROGENE web portal as a reference point for the sharing of a critical mass of educational content items and packages, offering an integrated toolset and service for content authors. ESHG, and particularly the Education Committee, is mainly involved in WP12: “Pilot evaluation (m16 – m36). Task leader: ESHG. Collaborators: EGF, KMI. Role of partners: ESHG will check on the quality, whereas EGF serves as coordinator. KMI evaluates tools and approach. Also, (end)-user groups will be involved in evaluation (questionnaire based evaluation)”.
- In practical terms we need to establish a Quality Control Committee with the tasks of validation of the ontology and identify quality criteria that the provider has to follow in contributing the material. This is defined in details and the Quality Control Committee needs to discuss this point.
- The Open University (Knowledge Media Institute) (KMI), has set up a very useful tool called FlashMeeting that allow video-conferences at no costs. The tools has been used for partners meeting and I have asked to be allowed to use this tool for the Education Committee. It is quite simple, you need only to connect to a web site at the time booked for the conference. To be able to be seen by the whole group you need a webcam and to participate you need a microphone and headphones. You may alternatively use integrated microphone and speakers. We had a first flashmeeting on the 31st of March.

3) DNA Day (April 25th)
Thanks to Celia DeLozier, our liaison with the American Society Education Committee, and at Marcus Pembrey’s suggestions, the DNA Day has also been launched in Europe. This event was created in the USA to commemorate the completion of the Human Genome Project in April 2003 and the discovery of the DNA double helix fifty years earlier. Our president Pier Franco Pignatti sent a letter to all Presidents of national Human Genetics Societies in Europe to encourage them to collaborate with local teachers association to promote the DNA Day in their countries. The Education Committee has set up a pilot contest for high school students with three prizes for the best composition sent to ESHG office (see ESHG web site). Of course organizing this kind of event it is more difficult in Europe that in USA, because of differences in languages and local culture. However, this first year will be a pilot project to help us understand better how to organize it next year.

4) Sub-Committees
- Accreditation Committee for Clinical/Medical Geneticists
(Chair Ulf Kristoffersson)
Report is not ready yet.

- Accreditation Committee Genetic Nurses/Counsellors
(Co-chairs Heather Skirton and Christine Patch)
The first European network of genetic nurses and counselors has been set up, and the first meeting will be held in Barcelona within the ESHG annual meeting. A survey of working roles and needs for support of the 65 current members of the network has been undertaken and is being analyzed for presentation at the ESHG meeting. Almost 30 members have already registered for the first network meeting in Barcelona.

- Accreditation Committee for Laboratory geneticists
(not started yet)

5) Working groups:
a) e-learning (coordinator Francoise Clerget-Darpoux)
Francoise is one of the partners of EUROGENE project as content provider. She has been very active in starting this project and we will have a meeting in Paris on April 18th. Once the Eurogene project is fully active, the e-learning activities of ESHG will be improved.
b) Public Health Genomics/Community Genetics (coordinator Martina Cornel)
Martina is organizing the annual workshop on Community Genetics (WS07). Domenico presented Eurogentest and Education Committee activities at the plenary session at the third meeting of the Public Health Genomics “From Policy Development to Assurance” of the European Network PHGEN, in Hinxton, January 23rd-25th 2008.

c) ESHG courses (coordinator Domenico Coviello and Jerome del Picchia)
The Education Committee has received two proposals for organising a course:
1) Counselling skills for genetic counselling ‘Training the trainers’ in a European context. Contact: H. Skirton: heather.skirton@plymouth.ac.uk
2) Genetic Epidemiology Of Human Diseases
Contact: F. Clerget: clerget@vjf.inserm.fr
The evaluation process is in progress.

6) Other activities
Domenico Coviello attended, as Italian delegate, the OECD Expert meeting on « Draft Guidelines on Human Biobanks and Genetic Research Databases” held at the OECD Headquarters in Paris, France, on 21-22 January 2008. The document has been disseminated for discussion and passed to PPPC for comments.

We will meet at the ESHG conference in Barcelona, on June 2nd 2008, from 10.15 to 11.15 in room 131.

My best regads,

Domenico

Archives:
Letter 13 - August 17, 2007
Letter 12 - August 17, 2007
Letter 11 - May 10, 2007
Letter 10 - October 3, 2006
Letter 9 - July 3, 2006
Letter 8 - April 21, 2006