Medical Matters/Dr Muiris Houston: Medical conferences are both big business and an essential part of disseminating medical knowledge and breakthroughs among doctors.
Some of the largest include the annual gatherings of American heart specialists, European respiratory experts and worldwide cancer specialists.
I am writing this column from the 12th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, in Helsinki, having been reporting from this triennial gathering of anti-tobacco campaigners, scientists and doctors over the past week. With 2,200 delegates, it is one of the year's biggest health conferences.
It is a refreshing event for a number of reasons. For a start, it is not purely for, and about, medical science. Many lay people are here, representing advocacy groups, international cancer societies, patient groups and non-governmental organisations. There are lawyers, politicians and many, many health professionals, including nurses and psychologists as well as doctors.
With an eclectic mix like this, the conference atmosphere is different from that at a traditional gathering of doctors. It is also focused on prevention, which seems positively healthy compared with the disease-oriented medical model. Success in tobacco is a long-term process: the gains made now in encouraging smokers to quit will not be reaped fully for 15 or 20 years.
But a tobacco conference is also culturally diverse. The problem faced by developing nations in terms of rising smoking rates is like déjà vu for Europeans and Americans. It is clear that the tobacco industry is refocusing its marketing efforts on the developing world.
According to its own predictions, cigarette consumption will have dropped by 8 per cent in Western Europe between 1998 and 2008 but rise by 16 per cent in Africa and the Middle East. In Asia and the Far East, an area with world's lowest smoking rates for women, tobacco consumption will increase by 6.5 per cent.
It was also instructive to learn about alternative methods of using tobacco apart from cigarettes, cigars and pipes. Betel quid, for example, consists of tobacco, areca nuts and staked lime wrapped in a betel leaf. Chewed, it is a favourite in many parts of the world, particularly South-East Asia - although it makes your saliva go red and, eventually, your teeth go black.
A bidi is, essentially, a cheap cigarette: a little tobacco, hand wrapped in a leaf and tied with string. Smokers light it like a cigarette, but because they need to puff harder on it than they do on a conventional cigarette they can inhale more tar and carbon monoxide. And although the inhalation of powdered tobacco - as in snuff - is on the decline, it is still popular in places such as Copenhagen, where the local variety apparently has a remarkable intensity.
But back to medical conferences. Patient participation is relatively common in the United States but not elsewhere. In June, however, the Health Research Board organised a unique conference in the Republic on hepatitis C infection. Not only did it bring together health professionals working in the area and those who had suffered from medical misadventure, contracting the virus from infected blood products, it also pioneered a format that was truly innovative. Basically, the organisers put together two conferences within one.
The usual medical one - complete with bamboozling acronyms and the fine print of immunology, a challenge even to the medically qualified but non-specialist participants - was running parallel to a conference for patients and laypersons with the same speakers, addressing the same topics and delivered in a jargon-free, accessible way. I found it especially fascinating to watch one speaker at both forums, to see how he was able to deliver the same material in vastly different ways.
It is a concept that other organisations here should explore. It would destigmatise the mysteries of medicine and science and, based on the hepatitis C conference, encourage a crossover of ideas and understanding that can only benefit the broadest aims of healthcare.
Back in Helsinki, the ultimate in conference innovation will be unveiled in the morning. The conference choir is due to give the first performance of Hello, Helsinki, the conference theme song, which was written by two Chinese delegates. Whether it is a step too far in conference-friendly activities remains to be seen.
You can e-mail Dr Muiris Houston at mhouston@irish-times.ie. He regrets he cannot answer individual queries