Abstract
Some 5000 persons, coming from 94 Countries all around the world, gathered in Florence, Italy, June 6–11, 1999, to participate in the IFCC-WorldLab, the 17th International Congress of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, organized by SIBioC, the Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Clinical Molecular Biology, on behalf of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC), an organization federating more than 70 national societies in the world.
The IFCC International Congress is held every third year, it is largely attended, and is the occasion for discussing the scientific, technologic and organization progressess of the last three years in the field of Laboratory Medicine. The 1999 edition of the Congress also included the 13 European Congress and the 31st Italian National Congress of the discipline, and the 1st International Congress of Clinical Molecular Biology.
The topics dealt with in the scientific program, including 5 plenary lectures (+2 given at the opening ceremony), 45 symposia, a number of additional events and industry-sponsored workshops, and 1569 accepted poster presentations, were arranged into three separated although intermixed main lines: ìClinical Chemistryî, ìClinical Molecular Biologyî and ìManagement and Economicsî. The Committee was very glad to accept the offer of JALA to publish part of the material presented and discussed at the Florence meeting: the presentations on topics belonging to the ìManagement and economics lineî, and those belonging to the ìClinical chemistryî line, mainly dealing with technical aspects of the discipline, were chosen as the best suited to the aims of the journal.
A number of such papers appear in the present issue of JALA. Some of them come from the Symposium on ìProjects for quality improvement in developing countriesî. It is the IFCCís policy to foster the development of the discipline in view of contributing to uniformly elevated levels of health care all around the world: the opportunity of discussing the developing countriesí problems in an international forum is one of the helping hands that IFCC can give to the Colleagues working in such countries. Other papers deal with some more technical problems, and with the changing laboratory organization that is being made possible by new technological advancements, in view of a better service at a lower cost.
The dissemination by a printed vehicle of the information certainly adds value to the Congress. On behalf of the WoldLab Committee, it is our pleasure to thank JALA for the hospitality.
Milano, September 1999
Carlo Franzini graduated in Medicine in 1958. He started a professional career in the hospital clinical laboratory, and worked part-time in the Institute of Biochemistry, University of Milano. In 1968 he was appointed Director of Clinical Laboratory and served in such a position in different hospitals while teaching Clinical Biochemistry in the post-graduate schools of the Universities of Milano and Pavia. Presently he is director of the laboratory of Clinical Chemistry of the Hospital L. Sacco, a teaching hospital in Milan, and is associate Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Milan. He is author of some 200 scientific papers, and his main interest is in anlytical methodology and quality control. Has served for many years in the Scientific Division and in the Publications Division of the IFCC. He has also been (1982–1984), and presently is (1999), President of SIBioC.