Message from the Chair

Welcome to the first official Message from the ‘Chair’, rather than the ‘Chairman’. I’m pleased to say the special resolution changing the title from Chairman to Chair was passed unanimously at the Annual General Meeting in Glasgow which means I get to be the last Chairman and the first Chair of IMI – there’s a potential pub quiz question for conference socials of the future.

The Conference in Glasgow was a resounding success thanks to the hard work and efforts of Sharon Sutherland and her conference team, those who presented papers and workshops, the trade exhibitors and the venue staff. In addition, there was palpable excitement and a buzz from the delegates who seemed to thoroughly enjoy it.

There also appeared to be considerable anticipation for the professional discussion, scheduled to follow the AGM. Unfortunately, time constraints meant this didn’t take place and so we decided we would provide the opportunity to have this discussion online as part of the virtual learning day, the date of which has just been confirmed as December 1^st from 1.30PM

Proposed topics for discussion are:

• Use of mobile devices and apps – how do we ensure our profession is at the centre of management of their use? How could the IMI training module help with this?
• Artificial intelligence – Friend or foe? Issues around harvesting of images from data bases and consent, automated diagnosis, AI created images.
• Band 4 posts undertaking clinical photography – Is it appropriate? How can we ensure it doesn’t start a tsunami of downgrading of posts? Where does Registration sit?

The theme for the Study Day itself will be Health and Wellbeing and details of the day and registration will be available very soon so keep an eye on the website and social media and put the date in your diary for what should be a very interesting afternoon.

As you may know, we have been working very closely with the University of Gloucester to help establish an undergraduate, 3-year degree in Healthcare Science specialising in Clinical Photography and I’m delighted to announce that the University has agreed a start date of September 2023 for the first student cohort. There is still a lot of work to do including internal and external accreditation processes and a timetable is in place for these. So, it’s all systems go but it does create some urgency for the university to engage with potential students whose applications will need to be submitted in the next few months and the university is looking for appropriate images to use on their website. If you have any consented images of clinical photographers in action and are happy to share them, please contact Steph Scrivens stephanie.scrivens@nhs.net as soon as you can so she can collate them and pass them onto the university web team.

That’s enough from me for the time being. Remember to look out for details about the virtual study day and put the afternoon of December 1^st in your diaries, and if  you have any available images for the University of Gloucester please send them to Steph as soon as you can. Oh, one more thing: PLEASE log onto the Institute website and make sure your contact details are up to date. Among other things it’ll help ensure you receive your printed copies of the Journal and also enable your Regional Rep to get in touch to let you know about future regional meetings – Yes, it’s true – after a long break without any (mostly because of the pandemic which I was determined not to mention this time) regional meetings are going to start happening again.

Anyway, I really am signing off this time.

Nick