MICCAI 2022 Daily – Wednesday

helping, including members from Africa, academics and researchers, and even members from the African industry. Is there a reason you feel personally connected to the project? I was born in France, but my parents are from North Africa. Therefore, I have always dreamt of seeing MICCAI on the African continent. I do not see this as an extra responsibility or as additional work but as a lot of fun. It is something I am very excited about. What could go wrong? Well, this is the first time we are doing it in Africa, so we are paying attention to several things. We are making sure that we will have the right venue and organization. We are also making sure that people will be able to get there easily. From a scientific point of view, how will you ensure that this big push will pay off in four or five years? The risk from a scientific point of view is that we go there and show the traditional work of MICCAI, which mainly targets applications in high-income settings. We need to start looking at a new set of problems specific to low-resource settings, including Africa, but other places too. For example, developing affordable low-cost solutions ensures accessible medical imaging and healthcare to the world ’ s population. We need to start working on this problem. In fact, people have already started working on this – maybe not enough, but that is what we want to do at MICCAI 2024. We want to ensure that there will be tracks regarding that. We will organize workshops dedicated to these problems. We will organize challenges with African datasets. We will put together a scientific program adapted to our goals and the needs in low-resource settings. Are you anticipating a positive reaction from European, Asian, and American members? Even in high-income settings, there are problems with access to healthcare. For example, healthcare problems exist in villages and rural areas in many so-called rich countries. These solutions will be applicable everywhere. From another angle, there is a market gap in places like Africa in low-income settings. Industries from all over the world will benefit from these new solutions and these new markets. I think everybody will benefit from this. I am really excited about this project, and I would like to thank everyone in the community who has been positive and excited about it too, and who has given us suggestions and feedback and encouraged us. Thank you, everyone! 21 DAILY MICCAI Wednesday With GC Karim Lekadir