1st Annual EUBIROD meeting Dasman Center for Research and Treatment of Diabetes, Kuwait City Kuwait City, Kuwait, 2nd-4th May 2009

Contents

The First Residential Course includes material from the 1st Annual EUBIROD meeting held at the Dasman Center for Research and Treatment of Diabetes in Kuwait City, Kuwait, 2nd-4th May 2009.

The main aim of the Course, as part of the activity of the BIRO Academy, is to induct partners of the EUBIROD Consortium to the approach developed in the project "Best Information through Regional Outcomes" (BIRO) and to disseminate the scope, materials and results delivered to a wider international audience through the complete coverage of the session available online.

The secondary aim of the Course is to provide the basis for EUBIROD partners to apply these concepts by using the BIRO software either on test data supplied directly by the Faculty, or on real datasets extracted by themselves from local registers.

The Course includes a series of lectures from a selected international panel of thirteen experts, the "BIRO Faculty", involved in the development of the BIRO system and using diabetes information for policy making on a routine basis.

Lectures at the First Residential Course are organized around four themes: the first three of technical nature (Background, Objectives and Data; The BIRO System; Implementation and Usage), the fourth focused on policy (Regional Diabetes Registries for policy and practice). Themes include a final discussion allowing for the audience to interact with the Faculty and stimulate provocative comments, as witnessed by the abstracts and video coverage. Over 50 participants from 20 countries attended the meeting.

The contents of the session are made fully available as abstract, flash movie, and slides, at the EUBIROD website (www.eubirod.eu), through a link to the "BIRO Academy", currently only accessible from the restricted area for EUBIROD partners and representatives of supporting institutions.

In the second year of activity, we anticipate the preparation of a subscription form, through which interested users ("BIRO Alumni") will be granted access with login from the Academy homepage, directly accessible from the unrestricted area of the EUBIROD website. This will allow us to grow a "BIRO Community" of certified stakeholders that can support the expansion of the action.

The enlargement of the BIRO community will provide the opportunity to include more experts in the Faculty, thus making the organization of future Courses an exciting and dynamic event, in line with the evolution of diabetes information and the further refinement of the BIRO system.

The Second Residential Course is expected to take place in the same period of the year 2010 in Kuwait City.

An e-learning platform based upon all subjects taught by the Academy will be added to the BIRO Academy section in late 2010 as an optional training activity for all Alumni.

The contents of the First Residential Course constitute Deliverable D2.1 of the EUBIROD Project: "BIRO Academy Residential Course Year 1", an activity of WP2: "Dissemination of the Results".

Proceedings and materials of the training session held at the 1st Annual EUBIROD meeting are part of Deliverable D4.1 of the EUBIROD Project: " Training Session", an activity of WP4: "Training".