What to expect from #ESOT2019 with Allan Rasmussen and Vassilios Papalois

Yeah, first of all, we're very proud to host this very prestigious congress, one of the most prestigious congresses in the transplant world. It has never been in Denmark before, so we thought it was time, and luckily other people thought so too. So we are very proud to host it. The creative capital is actually created by a good friend — he's a very famous artist, Pia Arnoldi. I told him that we would like a logo. He knew obviously a lot about congress-making. Yeah, I told him a lot about ISHLT, and I said we wanted a logo that was inspiring.

Making the thoughts about the creative capital exactly. Because if we look at the logo here, we see CPH — I guess the abbreviation for Copenhagen. CPH is — he said, 'How do people come to Copenhagen? They come by air. How is Copenhagen spelled at the airport? It's the H.' Yes, exactly — the creative capital. Then he created those three letters. The C is modern-day Danish design — that was his inspiration. You know, he created this, and from those lines the C came up.

It was modern design, which is something Copenhagen is famous for. The other thing is we have three very famous modern painters. The P — I don't think it was a map of the world, but it's actually symbolizing modern arts. And then the last is symbolizing innovation. I mean, you can see the latest — yeah, exactly. So I think it comes up quite nicely.

Well, first of all, to say how lucky we are to go to Copenhagen — a city that has everything for the lovers of fairy tales and the lovers of modern European life, which we absolutely adore. But the important thing is that from the moment the lights are off later on this afternoon in Barcelona, Barcelona belongs to the past. We are going to dissect the feedback from the congress here in excruciating detail and learn from that. But Copenhagen will have nothing to do with Barcelona, and Barcelona had nothing to do with Brussels, and the list goes on and on. This is the beauty of the ISHLT congress, because every two years you can have real new developments and substantial scientific material to present, and it's a new congress. The only common thing between the two is ISHLT — there is nothing else.

And with Allan, we're working already — we're very good friends and colleagues for many, many years now — on the five pillars, meaning content, format, people, connectivity, and fun. Okay, and these are going to be brand new. And in terms of content, we have created a number of hot topics we would like to go into, which will be there. And there'll be a scientific committee — as she is mentioned before, he and I will co-chair, and we had the first meeting yesterday morning.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And already many exciting ideas came on the table. I actually think that we are just standing ahead of maybe not a revolution, but an enormous evolution in medicine. I think there are so many exciting things happening now in transplant, the whole setup around the way we do diagnosis and treatments in our patients now — from molecular biology, from tissue engineering and things like that, that has been there for a while, but now the progress is enormous. And I think even in two years' time from now until Copenhagen, a lot will have happened.

Exactly. What we have in mind is that the people who will come to the congress — they will see and do things there they cannot do anyplace else. They can't find it in the literature, they can't find it on the internet, they cannot find it in their own department. They have to come to the congress to see it. And we're aiming for career-changing experiences. This is not just, 'Let's go and have a great time in a beautiful city.' We're not just saying that — there will be sessions with career-changing experience for the young and for the not-so-young anymore, let's put it this way.