Reflections on our 10th Anniversary Symposium, ‘One Medicine: Time to Innovate, Time to Act’
On Wednesday 9th October, our long-awaited One Medicine Symposium took place. That morning when I woke felt like the morning of my first marathon earlier this year - I was excited, but terrified! It wasn’t butterflies in my tummy, it was buffalos! What if, after all these months of preparing, I had forgotten something crucial? What if no-one turned up?
But thankfully, once I had arrived at the venue just before 8am and met with the Humanimal Trust team, my nerves gave way to excitement and anticipation. Our small team of dedicated individuals, staff and volunteers had spent many months ensuring everything was in order - from booking the wonderful Wellcome Trust as the venue, finding speakers, inviting guests, preparing presentations and arranging sustenance, to making sure the event ran as smoothly as possible and was an enjoyable, rewarding and worthwhile experience for all in attendance. And the feedback so far confirms that it was. In fact, it surpassed our expectations!
Despite some who had registered not making it to the event (a common problem post-Covid and with the rise in virtual events, not to mention traffic, train strikes and so on!), those who did, fully engaged, listened with interest and asked pertinent questions. We have much to follow up on!
The benefits of attending an event in person are that you can fully immerse yourself in the experience, feel the buzz of the audience, and appreciate the breadth of knowledge and passion each presenter has for their chosen topic. And each one of our 13 presenters did not disappoint!
After opening the event, I was honoured to introduce the Chair of Trustees for Humanimal Trust, Professor Roberto La Ragione, who spoke eloquently about our definition of One Medicine and what we have achieved over the past 10 years, including our online community - the Humanimal Hub, awarding over £200k of funding to projects relevant to One Medicine in both research and education, and delivering global talks and presentations. He ended his speech by outlining our objectives going forward, including funding more research, Connection Awards, a Cancer Discovery Fund, fellowships and scholarships, and our education programme, including One Medicine Societies in Universities and creating a One Medicine Handbook.
Our other excellent speakers in the morning session were:
- Professor Richard Meeson, Vet and Professor of Orthopaedics at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC): ‘The Pet Dog as a One Medicine Model of Osteoarthritis’
- Dr Helen Cohen, Consultant in Rheumatology and Chronic Pain at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH): ‘Human rheumatology and where we could work together’
- Dr Hannah Capon, Vet and Director/Founder of Canine Arthritis management (CAM): ‘Do we consider acute on chronic pain in our arthritic canines?’
- Dr Jo Miller, Managing Director of Cell Therapy Sciences Ltd: ‘Regenerative Medicine’
- Dr Ron Daniels, NHS Consultant in Intensive Care, Founder/CEO of the UK Sepsis Trust, and Vice-President of the Global Sepsis Alliance: ‘The threat posed by the interrelationship between sepsis and AMR’
- Dr Stefano Cortellini, Vet and Associate Professor in Emergency and Critical Care at the RVC: ‘Sepsis in small animals’
Lunch and networking followed (something else you don’t get in a virtual conference!), and the opportunity to speak with our special guests Nick Jukes and Christopher Lloyd.
Nick, UK Coordinator of InterNICHE, showcased his documentary film, ‘Surgery and the Syndaver Canine’, which Humanimal Trust part-funded last year after entering into a collaborative relationship after discovering a clear synergy between our organisations and alignment with our vision of working towards a future where animal testing becomes obsolete, and how beneficial working with actual patients (clinical trials) can be.
Chris, Author of the wonderful children’s book, Humanimal: Incredible Ways Animals Are Just Like Us! and recently launched We are all Animals signed and helped to sell many books for us. These books not only help us to vital raise funds and awareness, they also help us in our education programme for younger years. Children and adults absolutely love them!
Holding a raffle is also a great way to speak to new people, whilst raising funds - especially when you have the super prize of a luxury hamper! Thank you so much to M&S for kindly donating it, it was very generous.
Whilst the audience for the morning talks had predominantly been human and animal medical professionals, many of our supporters arrived during lunch and it was great to see both distinct audiences mingle and spark up spontaneous conversations.
Our Founder, Professor Noel Fitzpatrick, kicked off the afternoon talks in his usual unique, inspiring and passionate style. He truly has the knack of being able to communicate to absolutely everyone and he had the room enthralled.
Following on from Noel - never an easy feat, but managed beautifully - were our afternoon speakers:
- Dr Matt Morgan, Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine, Honorary Professor at Cardiff University and Author: ‘One Medicine’
- Iva Hauptmannova, Consultant Research Support at Humanimal Trust and Director of Research Untangled Ltd: ‘Developing an Ethical framework for One Medicine’
- Dr Mary Fraser, Vet, Director of Education at The Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh and new Vice Chair of Humanimal Trust: ‘The Interface between Human and Animal Medicine’
- Professor Sandra Strauss, Professor of Medical and TYA Oncology at University College London and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist: ‘Current Trends in Human Bone Cancer treatments’
- Professor Nicola Mason, Vet and Professor in the Department of Pathobiology at University of Pennsylvania: ‘NIH Cancer Moonshot Programme’
Our very happy, new Vice Chair, Dr Mary Fraser, hosted the Panel session and all our speakers were asked to comment on what the future holds for One Medicine, before the audience were invited to ask questions. No one held back and it highlighted the vast opportunities and (some) challenges we have. But the highlight for me was seeing new collaborations being formed. One Medicine in action!
All of the day’s speakers provided invaluable insights – and not just into their own specialities. They spoke enthusiastically about the potential for a cross-collaborative, reciprocal approach that would benefit both humans and animals.
The time came for me to close, rather daunting after 13 superstars. But I did my best to end the day with a call for action. I explained our new strapline, “One Medicine Caring for Humans and Animals”, which I would summarise as follows:
- We care about the health and wellbeing of humans and animals
- We care about ground-breaking medical research and progress that benefits all patients
- We care about human and animal medical and research professionals learning from and with one another
- We care about utilising clinical trials, which can be far more beneficial to patients and help make animal testing obsolete
- We care about research and finding the funds to expand our activities so that we can find treatments for diseases that affect all human and animals
- We care about education - that every child learns about the incredible and important connection we have with other species
- We care that medical students learn together and practice One Medicine
I then asked the audience a question, “Do you care? If you do, please support us in any way you can”.
I implored them to open their hearts and minds to a One Medicine world because at some point, we will be a patient, our family and friends - human or animal - will be patients, and surely, we want access to the best treatments, implants, drugs and cures. And the only way that is possible is to embrace One Medicine…NOW.
And just like that, the day was over. I was as shattered and exhilarated as when I had run the marathon in May.
But the hard work doesn’t stop there. In fact, with joy, hope and renewed purpose, it’s just the beginning. It feels like we are on the cusp of advancing One Medicine to the next level, so after just a little rest, it’s time to put into action all we learnt from the event itself and the incredible feedback we have received.
I look forward to the next decade where we can continue to advance not only the understanding of One Medicine, but together, we can make it a reality.
If you want to stay updated on all things One Medicine, sign up to our newsletter, One Medicine Matters, and follow us on social media. Further information about the Humanimal Hub can be found here.
Thanks for reading,
Joe