Top picks from the ERS leadership 2024

As ERS President, what are you most looking forward to about this year’s ERS Congress?

I look forward to welcoming healthcare professionals from Europe and the global respiratory community to the ERS Congress, which promises five days of cutting-edge science, state-of-the-art clinical sessions and plenty of opportunities to engage, present research, learn from leaders in their respective fields and network across specialties and borders.

Looking through the programme, there are many sessions where more than one specialty is present, where diversity and inequalities are addressed and where developmental aspects and preventive aspects are discussed.

My ambitions as President are:

1. For ERS activities to overcome usual boundaries and come out of our professional silos;
2. To emphasise the early origins of disease and increase activities towards prevention of respiratory disease which is the first part of the ERS mission;
3. To discuss inequalities in healthcare both within Europe as well as globally and how ERS can help in highlighting and tackling these issues

All of these are very well reflected in the congress programme.

What in your opinion will be the key sessions and hot topics in 2024?

I see this year’s congress theme as a really hot topic in itself, and one in which every member of ERS and each of the congress attendees can find the latest developments in artificial intelligence and digital medicine, plus opportunities, challenges and future perspectives in all fields of respiratory medicine.

The first session for every member not to miss is the Opening Ceremony (17:45 CEST, Saturday 7 September), where we will have a brilliant keynote speaker who is a visionary in AI in medicine. We will also have an address from Maria Neira, Director of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Look out for more sessions discussing the congress theme – Humans and machines: getting the balance right – including:

• ‘Little humans and machines, getting the balance right in childhood asthma’ (15:15 CEST, Sunday 8 September);
• ‘Getting the balance right: the ethics of artificial intelligence in clinical decision-making (10:30 CEST, Saturday 7 September);
• ‘How will generative artificial intelligence support our future practice? Ask AMECA, one of the most advanced humanoid robots in the world’ (11:30 CEST, Tuesday 10 September) where the AMECA robot will be presented and discussed.

What in your opinion will be the hot topics and key sessions for paediatricians?

There will also be a number of key sessions for paediatrics specialists, such as the paediatric half day Saturday 7 September (sessions 31, 42, 44); post-prematurity lung disease for both adult and paediatric respiratory specialists; and obstructive sleep apnoea and vascular injury: what we know and where we are going (13:45 CEST, Sunday 8 September)

There will also be a number of sessions I am keen to highlight which focus on inequalities in respiratory health. These are:

• Chronic respiratory disease burden in Europe: towards health equity in 2050 (08:30 CEST, Monday 9 September) focused on WHO Europe and ERS recent outputs and on the WHO European region
• Pulmonary rehabilitation: global adaptation and implementation (13:45 CEST, Tuesday 10 September)
• Cystic fibrosis beyond cystic fibrosis: recent advances and new perspectives (13:45 CEST, Tuesday 10 September)
• Paediatric asthma in 2024: from prevention to transition (13:45 CEST, Tuesday 10 September)