The Board of Genetic Counseling India, has successfully completed its 8th Annual International Conference 2023 in association with the University of Hyderabad (UoH). The conference was held in a hybrid mode from 7th to 9th July 2023 at the School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad.
The conference was inaugurated by Prof. Basuthkar Jagadeeshwar Rao, Vice Chancellor, University of Hyderabad along with Padmasree Prof. RMK Bamezai, the doyen in the field of Human Genetics and Cancer Biology, Prof Shiva Kumar, Dean, School of Life Sciences, Chairman of the Conference, Prof Prakash Babu, Department of Biotechnology and Co-chair Dr. Q Annie Hasan, President, Board of Genetic Counseling, India.
The conference has witnessed 411 in-person and over 150 online participants. Close to 100 abstracts with e-posters were also received. Six e-posters under three categories were selected for prize distribution. The keynote address delivered by Padmasree Prof Bamezai, left a very striking impact on the heterogeneous gathering that included students, researchers, clinicians and also both practising and aspiring genetic counsellors.
The conference was preceded by two pre-conference workshops, one on the “Teaching and training core skills of Genetic counselling” which was a hybrid workshop and the other was only in-person workshop on the “NGS and Bio-informatics for clinical practice”. There were altogether eight scientific sessions with knowledge packed presentations from 14 international and 52 national expert faculty members with diverse expertise. Various domains including Oncology, Neurology, Socio- legal ethical issues, Personalized Medicine, Nutrition, Sports, Human senses, Rare diseases, Psychology, Precision medicine and Reproduction were touched up on. The presentations and especially the panel discussions that included points on the current state of genomics in the clinical practice and steps to be included to improve the health care standards in a country like India in comparison with the world health care practices were very impactful on the audience. Several diagnostic companies from the field of Genomics were a part of this international conference.
Vice-Chancellor Prof B.J Rao, suggested to the members of the Board of Genetic counselling to work together with the faculty of University of Hyderabad to develop academic, teaching, training and research programs to advance Genetic Counseling profession in India.