National Cancer Intelligence Network National Conference, Belfast, 8-10 June 2015

Posted by jchoules

16 June 2015

Clockwise: Prof David Weller, Robert Wilson, Prof Willie Hamilton, Dr Peter Murchie, Prof Greg Rubin

Belfast. Yes, Belfast. Just the sort of venue you’d usually find an excuse to avoid if you are asked to give a session at the National Cancer Intelligence Network national conference. But you’d have been wrong to avoid it. Of course, I come biased, having been born within a mile of the conference venue, and gone to school a few hundred yards away. Belfast is lovely. The city always had some majesty – having been really wealthy in the 19^th and early 20^th century, before industrial decline set in, let alone the Troubles. But, hey, money – and peace – has really worked.

The NCIN matters. It’s the biggest conference of all the cancer number-crunchers. And we have lots of numbers to crunch in cancer. Its one gap has been in primary care – and rumour has it that previous meetings have had an undercurrent of low-level bleating that ‘the cancer problem is really the GP’s fault’. So, I was asked to go and lecture to disprove – or was it to prove – that point. I can’t tell you how well the lecture was received (though I was given a shamrock tie and a bottle of whiskey) but I can tell you I was mistaken for Sir Richard Peto, the amazing epidemiologist who knows everything about smoking. I must put it on my CV…..

Willie Hamilton, Professor of Primary Care Diagnostics, UEMS