1st European Conference on OAD (ECOAD)

20 October 2016

Recently Pharmacom Media staged the European Conference on OAD (ECOAD), bringing together pain and addiction specialists from across France, Germany and the UK. The conference had two main objectives: to finalise the development of an educational toolkit that can be used to further the education of healthcare professionals on Opioid Analgesic (painkiller) Dependence (OAD), and to discuss recent survey data collected from HCPs across Europe who manage patients with OAD.

The toolkit has been designed to allow the attendees to roll out small interdisciplinary meetings in their local areas, and includes both educational materials and engaging group discussion activities. Entitled Interdisciplinary workshops on Recovery in OAD (‘In-ROADs’), it is currently being finalised and will soon be made available to the attendees.

Results from a recent survey of GPs, pain specialists and addiction specialists from across the three countries were presented and discussed at length. The survey aims to help HCPs better understand the current treatment landscape of OAD, and identify areas where future improvements in clinical practice could be made.

Owing to the high level of interest shown by the attendees in these new results, the ECOAD co-chairs are currently looking at collecting further responses by disseminating the survey through their local medical societies. Once the final data has been collected, the co-chairs will develop a publication describing the current clinical pathway for managing OAD and highlighting national differences in the care of patients with this condition.

Delegate feedback:

• 100% found the organisation of the meeting to be good or excellent
• 70% were satisfied or very satisfied with the organisation of the meeting, quality of the slides, and the usefulness of the breakout sessions
• 60% were satisfied with the educational value and relevance of the content to delivering meeting objectives

The key change which delegates wished to see following the meeting was increased awareness of the problem of OAD and improved communication between addiction & pain specialists and GPs.

The meeting chairs (pictured) were Dr David Bremner (UK), Prof Maurice Dematteis (FR) and Prof Thomas Tölle (GE).