Pre-congress Workshops

WADEM is pleased to announce the pre-congress workshops that will take place on Friday, 2 May. The workshops are organized by our Special Interest Groups (SIGs): Infectious Diseases, Primary Care/Mass Gathering Medicine, and Counter-Terrorism Medicine. Registration information will be posted to this page soon!

• Infectious Diseases for the Disaster Medicine Professional
• Fusing Primary Care and Mass Gathering Medicine: A Hands-On Workshop in Multidisciplinary Practice
• Safeguarding Health Care: A Prescription for Securing Medicine’s Digital Frontier

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Infectious Diseases for the Disaster Medicine Professional

Hour 1: Emerging Infectious Diseases

• Outline of the major diseases of pandemic concern in the last five years (Ebola, Mpox, Lassa Fever).
• What are diseases forecast to be of concern in the next fiver years?
• How climate change increases the range of diseases, affects your local ER and public health, and impacts pandemics.

Hour 2: Travel Medicine for the Disaster Medicine Professional

• What are the major diseases of consideration by geographical location when deploying internationally to disaster zones (e.g., Malaria, Cholera, Yellow Fever, Dengue, TB, STIs)?
• What are the precautions to be taken (Vaccinations, Chemoprophylaxis, Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions)?
• What are the time frames and pitfalls of managing fever in the post-deployment period?

Hours 3 & 4: Bio Attack Agents and Case-based Scenarios

• A review of a series of bio-attack agents using interactive case-based scenarios. Designed for the audience to take part in semi-tabletop exercises, think through a differential diagnosis, and outline the next steps in medical management, quarantine, and from a health system point of view.
• Overview of the CDC’s Bio Attack Agents – Categories A, B, and C.
• What are the major agents of concern, and how to think through an agent that is communicable versus a toxin-related disease? What are the major chemoprophylactic agents for selected diseases, and when to use them?

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Fusing Primary Care and Mass Gathering Medicine: A Hands-On Workshop in Multidisciplinary Practice

This workshop will use table-top exercises (TTX) to showcase primary care and mass gathering medicine. It is targeted at primary care professionals (e.g., general practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, nurses etc.) and mass gathering medicine professionals that work or volunteer at large-scale events.

Learning Objectives:

• Developing an understanding of the different types of clinical presentations at mass gathering events and how primary care can contribute to management.
• Apply multidisciplinary practice in a simulated mass gathering scenario.
• Develop an understanding of primary health, mass gathering health, and how these areas intersect.

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Safeguarding Health Care: A Prescription for Securing Medicine’s Digital Frontier

Hour 1: Health Care Cybersecurity- Where Bits and Bytes Meet Flesh and Blood

• Richard Staynings, MS, Chief Security Strategist, Cylera & Teaching Professor, University of Denver
• Christian Dameff, MD, Co-Director of the UCSD Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity

From a review of the evolution of the topic from focusing on specific medical device vulnerabilities to the ransomware-associated shift toward a focus on clinical infrastructure security to key foundational concepts of connected healthcare delivery, this talk will present the epidemiology of this increasingly prevalent problem, highlight the distinct differences between prolonged network downtime and conventional disasters, and showcase the growing body of peer-reviewed literature on clinical outcomes in the setting of cybersecurity incidents. The total anticipated speaker time will be 45 minutes, with a 15-minute question-and-answer session following the presentation.

Hour 2: Digital Disease – Live Ransomware Clinical Simulation

• Claire Soria, MD, Assistant Professor, UC San Diego
• Nico Kahl, MD, Clinical Informatics Fellow UC San Diego
• Marshall Freiden, MD, Clinical Informatics Fellow UC San Diego

This session will feature a live clinical simulation tasking an emergency medicine-trained clinician to address patient care scenarios arising from a cybersecurity incident. Consisting of a combination of high-fidelity simulation tools, standardized patient actors, and one game but unwitting volunteer, this exercise will challenge the participant to manage atypical clinical situations without the ability to rely on connected medical technology or diagnostics. The exercise will take approximately 30 minutes and will be followed by a structured debrief where the moderator will review the exercise with the volunteer and dig into the thought patterns, clinical choices, assumptions, and pitfalls revealed by the scenario.

Hour 3: Advancing Healthcare Ransomware Resiliency and Response

• Christian Dameff, MD, Co-Director of the University of California San Diego Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity
• Jeff Tully, MD, Co-Director of the University of California San Diego Center for Healthcare Cybersecurity
• Grant Madden, Emergency Manager for the UCSD Healthcare Ransomware Resiliency and Response Program
• Isabel Straw, MBBS, PhD University College London (Tentative)
• Natalie Sullivan, MD, Assistant Professor, the George Washington University (Tentative)

The five presenters given nine minutes to present an aspect of the preparedness and response work completed by UC San Diego’s Healthcare Ransomware Resiliency and Response Program (H-R3P). Dr. Dameff will provide background on the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) as a funding mechanism and describe H-R3P conception and project aims.

Expected Outcomes
The imperative for clinicians, administrators, governmental officials, and other leaders in health care to understand and effectively respond to the increasing challenge of cyberattacks is more important than ever. Through lectures by experts in the field, practical demonstrations, and the introduction of novel and unique solutions to the global threat of health care cyberattacks, this presentation aims to equip healthcare professionals, policymakers, and technology stakeholders with actionable insights and practical guidance to navigate the complex healthcare cybersecurity landscape.