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Every year, health care leaders and providers from around the world gather in Kraków, Poland, to share the latest updates in internal medicine.

And this year, as the McMaster International Review Conference of Internal Medicine (MIRCIM) celebrated 10 years of excellence in medical education, the conference grew to new heights.

Co-hosted by McMaster University and the Polish Institute for Evidence Based Medicine (PIEBM), MIRCIM brought nearly 700 in-person attendees and 70 expert presenters to Kraków, with another 1000 participants tuning in online.

It’s the “uniqueness and excellence” of McMaster—the birthplace of problem-based learning and evidence-based medicine—that inspired the conference, says Roman Jaeschke, a professor in McMaster’s Department of Medicine and vice-president of PIEBM. “We wanted to showcase the knowledge, experience, and excellence of McMaster University to the global medical community.”

Thirteen faculty members from McMaster’s Faculty of Health Sciences were among the featured experts who shared the latest research and clinical insights that are shaping the modern standards in cardiology, pulmonology, gastroenterology, diabetology, endocrinology, nephrology, hematology, rheumatology, and infectious diseases.

“Ten years ago, I was involved in the founding of MIRCIM,” said Paul O’Byrne, dean and vice-president of the Faculty of Health Sciences. “At that time, and today, I firmly believe that this international conference is an invaluable opportunity for medical practitioners to learn the latest in research and teaching from global experts and to build valuable relationships that help improve societal health. The growing attendance of the conference and broad representation of participants and experts reflects the immense appeal of an event that remains grounded in the principles of evidence-based medicine, which was pioneered at McMaster University.”

This year also marked a first for the conference: A full-day session dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, featuring lectures and workshops led by experts from McMaster University, the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, the University of Manchester, and Gronigen University’s Medical Centre, among others.

“There is no doubt that AI will be increasingly present in both the daily work of doctors, as well as in scientific research and in health care system management,” explains PIEBM president Piotr Gajewski. “We must therefore keep up with the development of AI tools, and the pace of development in this area is already fast.”

In addition to the lecture and workshop series, the conference also featured the Young Talents in Internal Medicine world contest finals—a unique case competition for 20 members of the next generation of medical innovators.

Chosen from a pool of 120 doctors from 32 countries, the finalists each had 6 minutes to present a particularly difficult case they had encountered in their practice, taking the audience through the path they followed from problem to diagnosis, using the best available evidence.

his year’s conference marked a significant moment of growth for MIRCIM, with in-person attendance growing 43% and online registration up 39% over last year’s event.

The conference was also livestreamed to medical universities in Uganda, Rwanda, and Lesotho, as well as to institutions in Ukraine, including in Kyiv, Lviv, and Ternopil, to help ensure broader access to the latest knowledge and best practices.

With the conference behind them, Gajewski reflected on the unique event they’ve spent the last 10 years building and refining: “From the very beginning, our goal was to create an event that would provide doctors with current and reliable knowledge for use in their daily work,” he says. “We’ve managed to create an event that didn’t exist in Poland before—the only conference that brings together international experts, doctors, and students from all over the world each year.”

The team is already looking forward to next year’s conference, hoping to build on the momentum of this milestone year. For Jaeschke, it all comes back to McMaster: “Over the last 10 years, thanks to MIRCIM and the McMaster Textbook of Internal Medicine, ‘McMaster’ has become a recognizable designation to tens of thousands of health care professionals and learners around the world. We hope to increase this recognition and appreciation of excellence for years to come.”