SCATA - UK Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia

SCATA Members Newsletter September 2019

Dear SCATA Member

I was saddened to hear earlier in the month of the death of Dr Lawrence Rowe, ex-president of SIVA-UK and a longstanding SCATA member. I met Lawrence a number of times at our ASMs and we kept in communication on matters of mutual interest. I understand that he had metastatic cancer and had been ill for some time. If anyone has been able to find an obituary, could they pass the link on please ?

There has not been a great deal of SCATA activity over the summer, other than much-needed housekeeping on the web site to make it responsive and mobile-friendly. I have also done a security review and made a lot of changes so that we now get an A+ rating on Immuniweb.

SCATA has awarded two grants this year following successful applications. Dr Kariem El-Boghdadly from Guy's and St Thomas' Trust has been awarded £750 to assist with a survey of pre-operative anxiety and Dr Heena Bidd, also from Guy's, has been awarded £1,000 to assist with some aspects of technology in a study of "mentored" pre-habilitation. We look forward to hearing the outcome of both studies in due course. Although we probably aren't in a position to award any further grants this financial year, please feel to use the application form for projects due to start beyond May 2020.

I am pleased to say that Tom Johnson has joined us on the trainee committee, welcome Tom. We currently have just the one vacancy for someone to assist with event management. If you are interested, please get in touch.

Our 2020 ASM is still at the planning stage. Top of the list is a 2-day "state of the nation" event covering AIM systems in detail and a more general look at digital peri-operative care. Venue TBC but as we haven't met in London for many years, we're looking at venues in the capital.

Given the success of #gashack in 2017, it's high time we did another one, so there is a good chance that we'll peg a 2-day hack event either before or after the ASM in May.

As some of you know, I've decided to throw the NHS towel in, and resigned from my clinical role back in June. I did my last clinical session on Thursday past and it all felt a bit weird. However, I am not retiring, being just a few years over the half century - instead I hope to concentrate on digital health for what remains of my career. This might mean more time for SCATA, as I'll also be stepping down from my role as Chair in May next year. Top of the task list is to get all the presentations and videos from previous SCATA meetings into some resemblance of order and that will start with the Manchester meeting this year. I'll post regular updates when new content is uploaded to our channel.

A reminder that SCATA members are entitled to a free Livedrive subscription. I only recently set my account up and have begun using it in earnest. It sits nicely alongside Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox and iCloud, to the extent that I no longer have any idea where any of my stuff is ;)

If you'd like to get more involved with SCATA, ask to join our Slack Channel.

Finally this month, the traditional plug for Amazon Smile. Please consider supporting SCATA through your Amazon purchases by visiting https://smile.amazon.co.uk and selecting SCATA as your nominated charity. Either search by name, or use our charity code 1002231-0. Each time you buy something on Amazon, 0.5% of the purchase price is donated to SCATA.

Enjoy the Weekend

Regards

Grant

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