Briefing of the Euroson Pocus School Vienna, 10-11 September 2021 organized by EUVEKUS.

The Point of Care Ultrasonography is now an investigation in development, which can complement the physical examination of the family doctors and can guide the case management to the bedridden patients. We need training and quality standards, to ensure that this will be done in a way with positive benefits for our patients being useful to the implementation of ultrasound standards and practice guidelines of the primary care level. It involves personal contact between doctor and patient at "bedside", it is a fast in real-time method, repetitive, cheap, and harmless but dependent on the experience and expertise of the examiner. A new opportunity for PoC-US represents the application in primary care of the medical projects related to „telemedicine” connections among specialists and family doctors for enhanced patient management. The Educational Needs of GPs on the new methods and technologies are increasing, but the resources and infrastructure are limited now. It is thus necessary, the collaboration among the family physicians trainers, or academics, on the one hand, and the other, of the specialty physicians in the preparation and continuing medical education in family medicine. Early diagnosis can help to save many patients in primary care, based on notions of good clinical practice. Therefore, on the one hand, we will involve, to inform family physicians about the latest diagnostic and treatment protocols in POCUS, and on the other hand, we will launch a series of research projects in the field of clinical ultrasonography carried out by interested family doctors to emphasize the importance of this method.

After almost two years of online meetings, we managed to finally organize a regular meeting of Euroson POCUS School conducted by EUVEKUS (The European Ultrasound Working Group in Primary and Ambulatory Healthcare) under the auspices of EFSUMB and credited by EACCME, held in Vienna, Austria.

The conference venue was the University of Medicine of Vienna, within the building Universitätszahnklinik Wien and the artificial intelligence department, where we had the possibility and opportunity to have at our disposal several rooms (B1, B2, A2) and different amphitheaters in exceptional technical conditions, to support both our theoretical lectures presented by 12 international lecturers with expertise in the field of clinical ultrasonography, as well as the practical part of Hands-On workshops, on state-of-the-art and extremely high-performance devices dedicated to the primary healthcare section. We believe that it is very important to offer personal contacts and networking among our members, and although the epidemic is still quite active many of you have had the opportunity to physically join the conference.

The conference took place in hybrid form with more than 150 doctors present online, EUVEKUS accepting free online participation of young doctors under the age of 35, to promote POCUS in the younger family medicine and specialized outpatient medicine. We had at this event a number of 67 physically participating doctors, from various countries, namely: Austria, Romania, Israel, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Spain, UK, Belgium, Kosovo, Serbia, Czech Republic, Moldova, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

This was a special event in which practitioners of various specialties decided to participate in a significant number, meet old friends and make new ones, discuss the presentations and support the EUVEKUS.

Special thanks to our Keynote speakers who were the Presidents of three European organizations as Prof. Shlomo Vinker, the President of WONCA Europe (Israel), Prof. Christian Jenssen, the President of EFSUMB (Germany), and EUVEKUS President represented by Dr. Mihai IACOB as organizer and chairman of this true clinical ultrasonography marathon held over two days.
During this conference, we also had a one-hour round table in which the leaders of four medical international organizations (WONCA EUROPE, EFSUMB-the European Federation of Ultrasonography in Medicine and Biology, WFUMB - the Word Federation of Ultrasonography, and EUVEKUS) discussed the need and opportunity to introduce in the future Training Curriculum within the Family Medicine residency, which has a duration of 4 years in most European countries, of a new module of Clinical-Ultrasonography training for a period of 2-3 months to facilitate the use of this method in current practice. The conclusion of this debate was the fact that now when we have advanced and relatively cheap ultrasound devices, and high-performance technology with artificial intelligence with smart software using updated diagnostic algorithms, it's time to complete the classic clinical examination (by history, inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation) with the new clinical-ultrasound examination that currently allows us to visualize through ultrasound most organs and tissues of the human body(US-inspection), along with electronic ultrasound palpation through ultrasonographic elastography method, but also with the electronic auscultation through the Doppler Triplex technique. We support in the medium and long term the promotion of multimodal clinical ultrasonography in the current practice of outpatient medicine to increase the sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy with the implicit decrease of costs in the current healthcare system. But for these desiderata, it is necessary standardization, modern guidelines for the practice of POCUS, but also continuous medical education and improvement, because ultrasonography is an addictive, cheap and repetitive operator method.

The main objective of EUVEKUS is the close collaboration with WONCA and EFSUMB to create a network platform for the professional training of family doctors at the European level through close participation and opening to POCUS uses in the daily practice of the WONCA Europe and its networks such as EGPRN (European General Practice Research Network), EURACT (European Academy of Teachers in Family Medicine), EQUIP, EURIPA, in which we are an integral part.

We thank all the international speakers, also to our sponsors in the field of ultrasonography (LIAMED Brasov, GE, Mindray, TRISO), but especially to all participants who were present in large numbers with us, and we will invite you to the next Euroson POCUS School Vienna 2022 Conference, which will take place on 9-10th September 2022, which we hope will become a traditional Euroson POCUS School for this topic.

Dr. Mihai IACOB, MD, Senior Medical Expert,
EUVEKUS President
https://eurosonpocus2020.com/