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Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) is a member of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) 2024 Steering Committee and a valued Summit Partner under this year’s theme “Humanizing Health: Conflict, Equity, and Resilience.”
An initiative of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), WISH will feature more than 3,000 health policymakers, innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners gathering to look for and share innovative solutions to some of the world’s most significant health challenges.
WISH 2024 will focus on 4 main tracks:
- Health of Vulnerable and Minority Populations
- Health and Armed Conflict
- System-Level Innovation and Change
- Community-Led Engagement and Intervention
HBKU will play an active role in the summit, with faculty and researchers leading and participating in several panel discussions on the latest developments in healthcare technology, healthcare in urban environments, and Islamic bioethics. To learn more about HBKU’s speaker participation at WISH 2024, please view the schedule below.
Day 1: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
| Title | Policy Labs: Impacting Health Policy and Advancing Public Discourse |
|---|---|
| Time | 10:15 am - 10:25 am |
| Location | HBKU Booth |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | Policy Labs designed by College of Public Policy students foster innovative policy perspectives that significantly impact health policy and advance public discourse. Through engagement with real-world challenges, students develop creative solutions to critical health issues. These labs promote interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling students to incorporate diverse insights and methodologies. The resulting policies are both practical and forward-thinking, shaping public health strategies and fostering continual improvements in health outcomes and policy effectiveness. |
Speaker
| Title | Dual Specificity Phosphatase 22 is a Critical Regulator of Adipocyte Differentiation Through Insulin Mediated Signaling |
|---|---|
| Time | 11:55 am - 12:05 pm |
| Location | HBKU Booth |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | This talk will share insights on CGL2, a rare form of lipodystrophy that causes early age acceleration, loss of adipose tissue, and cardiometabolic issues. Recent findings reveal hypomethylation in the Dusp22 promoter in CGL2 patients, suggesting Dusp22 is essential for adipocyte differentiation. Loss of Dusp22 impairs adipogenesis in 3T3L1 cells and ADSCs, with Dusp22-deficient preadipocytes also showing reduced insulin sensitivity—a key factor in adipogenesis. |
Speaker
| Title | Towards Implementation of Genomics Medicine Research in Healthcare in the Middle East: The Case of Cardiovascular Diseases |
|---|---|
| Time | 12:15 pm - 12:25 pm |
| Location | HBKU Booth |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | This talk will explore the critical role of integrating genomics with patient clinical data to enable personalized treatment and prevention strategies, with a focus on the Middle East. Highlighting Qatar’s progress through initiatives like the Qatar Biobank and Qatar Genome Program, the discussion will address both achievements and challenges relative to advances seen in European countries. For cardiovascular diseases with modifiable risk factors, genomics holds promise for prevention, diagnosis, and optimized treatment approaches. The talk will also cover recent progress in polygenic risk scoring for cardiovascular traits and the practical implementation of these scores in clinical settings. Additionally, the potential of artificial intelligence to leverage genomics and clinical data for improved disease prediction in Qatar and the Middle East will be examined. |
Speaker
| Title | The Ethical Management of AI in Healthcare |
|---|---|
| Time | 2:15 pm - 3:30 pm |
| Location | Al Mayassa Theatre |
| Type | Panel |
| Description | The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform medical practice by enhancing diagnostic accuracy, treatment efficacy, and overall patient care, as well as biomedical research and drug development. With this technology's unprecedented opportunities and progress, ethical considerations are now at the forefront of research and policy. In this session, the ethical implications of AI in healthcare are explored and considered through the lens of Islamic bioethics. |
Speakers
Day 2: Thursday, November 14, 2024
| Title | AI for Palestine |
|---|---|
| Time | 10:15 am - 10:25 am |
| Location | HBKU Booth |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | This talk will focus on how commercially available chatbots and other web and media sources present the narrative from the Zionist perspective. This creates a dual violence, where a genocide is first carried out and then the narratives of the Palestinian struggle are erased. Transparent, truthful, and accurate information about the Palestinian struggle is needed. The objective is to illuminate the Palestinian narrative, provide answers from the Palestinian perspective, amplify the voices of the oppressed, and celebrate Palestinian history and culture. |
Speakers
| Title | Large-Scale Multi-Omics Integration for Discovering Pathways in Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity in the Qatari Population |
|---|---|
| Time | 11:20 – 11:40 am |
| Location | Spotlight Stage |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | The talk will share insights on the role of multi-omics analysis in precision medicine, particularly for enhancing personalized therapies in the Qatari population. The research focuses on analyzing omics data from the Qatar Genome Program to identify molecular biomarkers associated with Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity. By integrating genomics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and transcriptomics, the study aims to uncover novel pathways and mechanisms underlying these conditions, paving the way for more targeted and effective treatments. |
Speaker
| Title | Hosting the 17th World Congress of Bioethics (WCB) in Doha: Global Bioethics Discourse and the Question of Diversity |
|---|---|
| Time | 12:20 pm - 12:30pm |
| Location | HBKU Booth |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | The talk will focus on the 17th World Congress of Bioethics (WCB), a premier international event that convened approximately 1,000 participants, including researchers, scholars, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and other global stakeholders. This historic edition was the first to be held in the Arab world and the Middle East, featuring the unique theme, "Religion, Culture, and Global Bioethics." The congress highlighted bioethical perspectives rooted in religious and cultural traditions that had often been marginalized in previous editions. |
Speaker
| Title | Prophetic Medicine Today: The Interplay of Medicine, Ethics, and Sharia |
|---|---|
| Time | 12:45 pm - 1:15 pm |
| Location | Agora |
| Type | Panel |
| Description | The panel will explore Prophetic Medicine (Al-Tibb Al-Nabawi), which emerged during the Islamic Golden Age. It will address common misconceptions and misrepresentations of Al-Tibb Al-Nabawi in comparison to modern medicine. The session will draw on both early and contemporary works by religious scholars and institutions to highlight the core principles of Prophetic Medicine. |
Speaker
| Title | Personalized Care for Qatari Patients with Genetic Predisposition to Hypercholesterolemia: Enhancing Prediction, Diagnosis, and Management |
|---|---|
| Time | 1:05 – 1:25 pm |
| Location | Spotlight Stage |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | The talk will present recent findings from a QRDI-funded project focused on developing a personalized healthcare approach for Qatari patients with hypercholesterolemia, aimed at refining current approaches to the prediction, diagnosis, and management of this disease. |
Speaker
| Title | Indigenizing Genomics in the Gulf Region (IGGR): The Missing Islamic Bioethical Discourse |
|---|---|
| Time | 1:50 - 2:10 pm |
| Location | Spotlight Stage |
| Type | Talk/Speech |
| Description | The IGGR project aims to become a leading initiative in developing an interdisciplinary Islamic bioethical discourse on genomics. It will accomplish this by integrating the Islamic religio-ethical tradition with global ethical traditions through dynamic conversations. The project aspires to convene experts in biomedical sciences and Islamic ethics to provide rigorous insights on Islamic bioethics and genomics. By engaging with the Qatar Genome Project, it seeks to find synergies and optimize research outcomes. The project examined the impact of its results on drafting laws and developing informed, ethical policies related to genomics in Qatar, the Gulf region, and beyond. It aims to provide high-quality deliverables such as academic publications, online articles/essays, and information on mobile apps. IGGR will serve as a model for dialogue between science and Islam, creating methods, questions, and vocabulary to facilitate the integration of these knowledge sources. The model will help organizations and governments address challenges faced by Muslim communities as they engage with modern technological advancements through holistic approaches tied to the Islamic tradition. |
Speaker
In addition, the HBKU booth will be present in the QNCC exhibition area and will feature posters and displays showcasing community-developed technologies that address health challenges on both national and global levels. The displays will highlight technologies serving humanity, tools to support health policy formulation, and innovative solutions for bridging the data gap in biomedical and healthcare research, benefiting researchers and practitioners alike.
Reports
| Title | The Ability Friendly Program: Advancing Inclusion Through Adaptive Sports. |
|---|---|
| Type | Publication |
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