From June 6 to 7, 2022, former OMI Slovak fellow and faculty member, Dr. Peter Krcho, Head of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital of P. J. Šafárik, Košice, organized the 10th Košice Neonatology Conference in Kulturpark, Košice, Slovakia. Since the beginning of the bi-annual conference twenty years ago, it has been included in an OMI satellite symposium event. The idea of the conference originally started in Salzburg, Austria, where Dr. Krcho met one of the OMI faculty members, Dr. Steven Donn from Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Since their initital meeting and the creation of the conference, Dr. Donn has lectured at all of the Košice Neonatology Conferences since 2002. Several other international speakers were also present this year, including Dr. Semir Gupta, Dr. István Seri, as well as remote speakers Dr. David Adamkin and Dr. Maximo Vento.
This year the conference was organized in a hybrid form, with a total of 84 physicians participating both in-person and remotely. Participants were from a variety of countries, including Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, and Romania.
During the opening of the conference, President of the Slovak Pediatric Society, Dr. Milan Kuchta, provided Dr. Donn the Honorary Member of the Slovak Pediatric Society award, and Dr. Peter Krcho was awarded a bronze medal for the development of the Slovak Medical Society.
Dr. Aulitzky, OMI CEO, gave a short speech about the Open Medical Institute and the Salzburg seminars during the evening gala. He also met with up to 20 fellows from Košice, some of which are neonatologists and participants in the conference.
Since the beginning of the OMI in 1993, more than 900 OMI fellowships have been granted to Slovak physicians. Physicians specifically from Košice have attended more than 130 OMI Salzburg seminars and 23 observerships in Austria. Additionally, there is an OMI Center of Excellence in Pediatrics in Slovakia. The OMI has been a main source of support by providing financial assistance to purchase technical equipment for the telemedicine project, which has a goal of facilitating the exchange of medical education and knowledge, among other activities. The pilot telemedicine project has interconnected the Pediatric Cardiac Center in Bratislava, Slovakia with the NICU and Children’s University Hospital in Košice, Slovakia.