ACB Southern Region are pleased to invite everyone to join their Bill Richmond Prize Meeting which will take place from 11.00am on Thursday 21 April, followed by their AGM (13.00-14.00pm).

The submissions for the Bill Richmond Prize have now been received and the speakers and topics have been selected detailed in the agenda below. Two winners will be awarded the Bill Richmond Prize on the day.

AGENDA

• 11.00-11.05 Introduction to the Bill Richmond Prize
• 11.05-11.25 Kade Flowers, "A Curious Case of Vanishing Creatinine" (authors: Kade Flowers, Emma Tuddenham, Anya Leiva, Lisa Garrison, Joanne Morris, Tamsyn Cromwell, Frances Boa & affiliations: Royal Sussex County Hospital)
• 11.25-11.45 Rebecca Biss, "Development and validation of a six steroid LC-MS/MS panel in whole blood collected using volumetric absorptive microsampling" (authors: Rebecca Biss, Sarah Pitkin, Anne Dawnay & affiliations: Barts Health NHS Trust)
• 11.45-12.05 Thomas G Morris, "Adult THS blood spot reference interval" (authors: Thomas G Morris, Jonathan Layley, Robin Geevarghese, Lucille Steele, Joshua Ssali, Mehdi Mirzazedeh & affiliations: South West Thames Newborn Screening Laboratory, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, London, UK)
• 12.05-12.25 Charles Van Heyningen, "A case study of childhood cardiovascular disease" (authors: Charles Van Heyningen & affiliations: Royal Free (Retired))
• 12.25-12.45 Jaya Shrivastava, "A new UK NEQAS Parasitology external quality assessment scheme for molecular detection of faecal parasites" (authors: Jaya Shrivastava & affiliations:UK Health Security Agency)
• 12.45-12.55 Break for delegates & judges’ deliberation
• 12.55-13.00 Announcement of prizes

Rules for the Bill Richmond Prize Members' Papers Competition
  
AIM: to encourage high quality oral presentation of scientific data, cases and audits by Southern Region ACB members, especially trainees.
 
RULES:

1. Entrants must be members of the ACB.
2. Only one abstract and one presentation per first author is permitted.
3. The presenter must be the first author of the work and have made a substantive contribution to the reported results, where applicable.
4. Three judges will be nominated by the local meeting organiser and approved by the meeting’s secretary.  It is preferable to have at least one clinical and scientific judge and that all judges have FRCPath.
5. The abstracts will be anonymised and judged by the judges on the following criteria:
   1. Content including originality (mark out of 10)
   2. Clarity of information presented (mark out of 10)
6. Scores from the criteria above will be summed by each judge.  The mark from all three judges will be pooled and the abstracts ranked based on total score.
7. Invitations to present will start with the top ranked abstract and end depending on how many presentations are available in the meeting programme.  If someone invited is unable to present the next ranked abstract will be invited to present.
8. Presentations will be limited to 10 minutes with an additional 5 minutes for questions
9. The presentation will be judged on the following criteria:
   1. Content including originality (mark out of 10)
   2. Oral presentation e.g. diction, lucidity (mark out of 10)
   3. Use of audio visual aids (mark out of 10)
   4. Response to questions (mark out of 10)
   5. Adherence to the allotted time (mark out of 10)
10. Scores from the criteria above will be summed by each judge.  The mark from all three judges will be pooled and the winners will be the two individuals with the highest score.
11. Two prizes will be awarded; both of £100
12. Members outside the region are welcome to apply and submit an abstract and the shortlisting criteria above will apply, however they will not be eligible for the prize.
13. Consultant grade members can submit an abstract however they will not be eligible for the prize.
14. If there is an excess of abstracts then preference will be given to trainees (non-consultant grade).