Intelligent Ultrasound Partners with Specialists to Deliver Endometriosis Ultrasound Courses
Intelligent Ultrasound (IU), the ultrasound simulation and education company, today announced that it is supporting and delivering a series of endometriosis education workshops. Partnering with specialists, the courses taking place in the United States and United Kingdom will equip medical professionals with the additional knowledge they need to use ultrasound for early detection and diagnosis of the disease.
Endometriosis is a prevalent yet often under-diagnosed condition affecting approximately 1 in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK and the US. On average, it takes around 8 years from the onset of symptoms to receive a diagnosis 1, with lack of awareness and limited access to endometriosis specialists cited as two major factors in diagnosis delay 23.
It is evident that awareness of the disease is increasing at pace and there remains a strong narrative around limited access to specialists. In relation to this, in 2024 IU launched its own campaign – ‘train, identify, diagnose’ – calling for more sonographers to be trained to identify complex cases of endometriosis, so that patients can be diagnosed and referred for treatment sooner. The campaign followed the launch of IU’s new endometriosis module for its ScanTrainer ultrasound simulator, now known as Endometriosis Plus, which will support specialists with the delivery of the workshops in March.
The initial workshops will take place at the International Endometriosis Imaging Conference in Miami, Florida from the 8 – 9th March, the first international congress dedicated to medical imaging for endometriosis. Dr Wendaline VanBuren,
Course Director of the Endometriosis Center of Excellence (EICE), will use IU’s simulator to support her ‘Ultrasound and MRI Cases for Aces’ sessions, allowing delegates to get hands-on with ultrasound, using real patient scans.
A second workshop will take place in the United States at the end of March in Orlando, at the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) Annual Convention, where Dr Mathew Leonardi, Assistant Professor at McMaster University, plans to deliver a dynamic hands-on simulation-based session to master advanced ultrasound techniques for diagnosing endometriosis.
On the workshops in the United States, Intelligent Ultrasound Chief Product Officer Kathryn Jenner commented: “We’re excited to partner with Drs VanBuren and Leonardi to support these important events. We’ve been lucky to work with specialists across the world, with Dr Jean-Marc Levaillant, obstetrician and gynecologist specializing in fetal medicine and ultrasound imaging and Edwige Hurteloup, to develop Endometriosis Plus. It will be great to see the power of specialist teaching and our technology come together next month”.
In the United Kingdom, IU will host its own training event at its headquarters in Cardiff on Wednesday 19th March. Like the events in the United States, IU will be joined by specialists and clinicians from UK hospitals and its own team, to deliver the training which will cover normal anatomy and the sliding sign, along with a series of cases covering mid, posterior and anterior hands-on sessions.
Kathryn continued. “The three events are timely, all falling in March which is Endometriosis Awareness Month. Our commitment to education goes beyond one month though. Feedback from the workshops will allow us to further develop our Endometriosis Plus simulator. If the first IU event proves to be successful, we’ll look to take the training on the road, scheduling more courses across the United Kingdom in 2025.”
To learn more about or register for the workshops in the United States, delegates can use the links above. For more information on the IU workshop taking place in the United Kingdom, readers should email marketing@intelligentultrasound.com
References:
- All-Party Parliamentary Group on Endometriosis (APPG). (2020). Endometriosis in the UK: Time for Change – Inquiry Report 2020. Accessed July 2024: link ↩︎
- Endometriosis UK. (n.d.). What is Endometriosis? Accessed July 2024: link ↩︎
- UK Parliament Committees. Medical misogyny’ is leaving women in unnecessary pain and undiagnosed for years. Accessed Dec 2024: link ↩︎
About Intelligent Ultrasound Group
Intelligent Ultrasound (AIM: IUG) is one of the world’s leading ultrasound simulation and education companies, specialising in real-time hi-fidelity virtual reality simulation for the ultrasound training market. The company’s main products are the ScanTrainer obstetrics and gynaecology training simulator, the HeartWorks echocardiography training simulator, the BodyWorks Eve Point of Care and Emergency Medicine training simulator, the new BabyWorks Neonate and Paediatric training simulator and NeedleTrainer, which teaches real-time ultrasound-guided needling. To date over 1,800 simulators have been sold to over 800 medical institutions around the world.