Tonight, the stage floor of the Sarajevo National Theatre has hosted top professionals – the finalists of the International Medis Awards for Medical Research. In five years, the contest has become a synonym for excellency in the field of medicine, as it acknowledges and rewards the best doctors and pharmacists of the Central and South-Eastern Europe.
Doctors and pharmacists who have published their extraordinary professional achievements in established international publications with an impact factor of 1.5 competed for this year’s awards. With their innovative medical projects as many as 156 doctors and pharmacists from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia have applied to this year’s international contest.
From the applied research works, which bring pioneering diagnostic methods and novelties in nine therapeutic fields, the international panel under the leadership of the prominent Slovene rheumatologist Prof. Matija Tomšič, MD, PhD, has chosen 18 finalists.
“The international panel of the International Medis Awards has been slowly tightening the conditions every year and endeavoured to establish as transparent choice of the winners as possible. Which we have really managed to do! For each progress in our personal as well as professional life we must raise the slat and do our best to jump over it. If we want progress, we must set our goals higher and higher. Today’s evening is the proof that without hard and persistent research work, there is no good clinical praxis. Therefore, if we want to ensure our patients the best possible treatment, we must be involved into research work as well,” has the President of the international panel of the International Medis Awards, Prof. Matija Tomšič, MD, PhD, addressed the excited audience in the Sarajevo National Theatre just before the grand announcement of the winners from nine medical fields.
The panel has this year reviewed and assessed a record number of applied innovative projects, with which more than 156 researchers from nine fields competed for the prestigious awards. The fields were: intensive care medicine and anesthesiology, gastroenterology, gynecology, rheumatology, neurology, ophthalmology, pediatrics, pulmonology and allergology, and pharmacy.
The initiator of the International Medis Awards is the Medis Company, in which they have decided five years ago, at the 25th anniversary, that they will specifically support and reward excellent individuals who move the borders of the known in the fields of medicine and pharmacy with their research work and clinical praxis.
As an extension of this decision, which Medis has fulfilled for the fifth year in a row, the President of the Supervisory Board Tone Strnad, MSc Pharm, has explained: “After 25 years of successful work in the fields of medicine and pharmacy we have found out that there are many exceptional research stories written by doctors and pharmacists. Their research achievements attract a lot of attention and are very valued abroad, but they remain less noticed and recognized in our society. We are convinced that they deserve a special recognition and tribute, as they importantly influence the development of diagnostics and treatment. It makes me especially proud to be able to participate in the announcement of the finalists and winners of the International Medis Awards 2018!”
The audience in the Sarajevo National Theatre has in the introductory part been greeted also by the academician Miloš Trifković, the President of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has emphasised that research work is the engine of new knowledge and one of the most important factors of a development-oriented society, which is still not present enough in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is also why he regarded the award ceremony for research excellency in Sarajevo as a welcome encouragement of the science.
