The focus of this theme is clinical medicine, not as a speciality but to do with patients in the clinical setting. It will include any research conducted within a clinical setting or that has a clinical application. This could include: audits of patients, clinical trials, evaluation of outcomes or survival data, innovative management of large groups of patients, home programmes, or the use of IT in managing patients.

This theme will include therapeutic intervention research – pharmaceutical, nursing, physical (such as exercise or physiotherapy) and educational (such as occupational therapy).

Registrars within the clinical disciplines are strongly encouraged to submit their MMED projects for presentation under this theme.

This theme will focus on infectious diseases, also known as contagious diseases/transmissible diseases/communicable diseases. Such diseases comprise clinically evident illness (that is, characteristic medical signs and/or symptoms of disease) resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual host organism.

Infectious pathogens include some viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions. Disease investigations that include aetiology, transmission, prevention, epidemiology, immunity, diagnosis (microbial culture; microscopy; biochemical tests; molecular diagnostics) and treatment will fall under this theme.

This theme will cover two key aspects of population-level supply-side responses to health problems namely the production of health workers and the delivery of health services.

Research in the following areas would fall within this theme:

• The education and training of health professionals (including the allied disciplines).
• The organisation, management and evaluation of health services.
• Issues at the health systems level including health financing, human resources for health, health information systems, medical supply systems, governance and accountability.
• The development and implementation of health policies.

The molecular and comparative biosciences theme is aimed at researchers working in many of the pure biological sciences.

Molecular biology deals with the molecular basis of the processes of replication, transcription, translation and cell function. Investigations which aim to understand the interactions between the various cellular systems also fall within this theme. This is inclusive of molecular genetics, biochemistry, bioinformatics and computational biology.

Comparative biology on the other hand encompasses many of the biological sciences including, but not restricted to, evolutionary biology, physiology, systematics, palaeontology, biological anthropology, developmental biology and genomics.

Researchers who have assessed the determinants, development or treatment of non-communicable disease are welcome to submit papers to this theme. Researchers who have investigated how poor health or disease impacts upon a patient’s quality of life, and what adjustments may alleviate these impacts, are also welcome to submit papers to this theme.

Lifestyle (for example smoking, drinking, diet, exercise, and sleep habits), together with genetics and/or environment induce may worsen or alleviate a stress that has an impact on body function and the activities of organs, tissues, or cells. Furthermore, changes in stress may or may not result in acute/chronic non-communicable disease such as (but not limited to) hypertension, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.