2025 Call For Unmet Needs in Under-Resourced Settings

Deadline:

The ISMRM is preparing for the annual meeting in Cape Town, South Africa in 2026, where aside from the normal meeting objectives, we will engage in how ISMRM can help provide access to MRI in under-resourced areas.  In preparation, we invite members to submit Unmet Needs for MRI in under-resourced regions for presentation and discussion at the Honolulu 2025 meeting (Thursday May 15, 8:15-10:15am).  These will be posted to prompt the society as a whole to innovate, develop and validate solutions to these Unmet Needs, for presentation at the Cape Town meeting.

In 2023-2024 we held a Clinical Translation: Unmet Needs challenge, in an effort to prompt members to focus on well-specified clinical needs.  In 2024-2025, we turned to members to submit, discuss and present the unmet needs.  The 2025-2026 initiative is broader, including both clinical and technical needs that will inspire researchers toward expanding access to and application of MRI in under-resourced regions.

We encourage you to view the recorded webinar on Specifying Unmet Needs (March 2024), as a guide to how to identify and communicate a need.  The format for 2025-2026 needs is broader, but the concepts are the same:  An Unmet Need Statement should address a specific task, in a specific context, with a measurable outcome.  It should include background information in support, and both “must-have” and “nice-to-have” features which will easily enable evaluation of solutions.

Our hope is to energize the ISMRM membership to continue to communicate the wide array of challenges faced in implementing MRI in challenging environments, with different patient populations, and varying diseases.  Often we find that if, with a carefully written need statement, our members can focus on the specific problem, rather than simply inventing novel methods in search of an application.  The latter approach often advances technology, but here we focus on the former.

Submit via form. Please keep to 500 words total!   Concise communication is your goal, and there will be time to develop these further (below).  Please follow the sections.

For Hawaii you would be asked to submit a digital poster in the format of the “Clinical Translation:  Unmet Needs” (click to one of the needs posters here).  During the session you will present the need, with time for discussion from the audience.  After the session, you will have an option to revise these digital posters, which become the “challenge” for other members to respond to at the Cape Town meeting.

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Submission

Please read these guidelines and suggestions carefully - experience shows that the structure below helps lead to successful innovation.

  • 1. Read some of the Unmet needs from 2023 and 2024 and watch the recorded webinar on Specifying Unmet Needs (March 2024). These will help you form specific targets for the structure.
  • 2. Fill out the form and submit by April 18, 2025. This information is for the committee to select presenters for a discussion session at the Honolulu ISMRM.
Describes the general area of work
Write ONE SENTENCE that describes the need, the specific target population or area, and a measurable outcome. This usually requires careful editing - see the webinar for suggestions, though the goal is to discuss and revise these in Honolulu as well.
List about 3 to 4 features that a solution MUST demonstrate to lead to success.
List other features that are desirable but NOT NECESSARILY critical to success.
Provide a short summary, up to 200 words, with background information, including prior work.
  • 3. If your selection is accepted, we will ask you to submit a simple digital poster with one slide for b, c and d, as well as more detail describing the background challenge and prior work. These will EXACTLY follow the format of the 2024 Unmet Needs - Please review these.
  • 4. We will ask you to make a short presentation in the session on Thursday May 15 at 8:15-10:15am.
  • 5. Submissions will be selected based on the impact of the need, as well as how likely it is that progress can be made in this area in a short time.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • 1. Do these need to be clinical needs? NO! For this year, as examples, your need could relate to reliability in areas where power is limited or a need for better training resources. Clinical needs are still welcome!
  • 2. Is it okay if my group works on the problem? YES, however please share the Unmet Need in a way that you would encourage others to work in this area. The goal is to promote communication, not just another forum to promote your own work.
  • 3. What if I am not an expert in the area?
    • a. We suggest finding others to help write the need. Identifying and describing the need should be independent of developing the solution, so this is fine.
    • b. We will discuss the needs at a session in Honolulu so you can receive suggestions and feedback that help refine these statements - revisions to the statement may lead to a better solution.

Please email clinicaltranslation@ismrm.org with any questions.

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