The Iris Hotel in Chennai was the venue for “Professional updates” themed AUTCON 2022, NICE Conference on Autism. Starting in-person sessions after the break for pandemic, we treaded a cautious path with targeting only 100 in-person attendees and another 100 on-line. The event was planned to be hybrid with even some speakers joining online.

Inaugurated By Dr.Ezhilarasi President IAPCCB and Dr.Amithab Dwivedi, Prof in OT NIEPMD, EX DEAN OG JOTC, EC MEMBER OF AIOT , the scientific session started with the basics of clinical practice – EVIDENCE. This is NICE’s 6^th Annual Autism Conference, and we have been able to Inspire and Engage with our audiences every time. Looking back, what started as a MCHAT workshop, has now evolved to having discussions on behaviors and workshop on entrepreneurship. We are proud of this.

This year we attempted a hybrid mode with a conference platform Virtrio. Packed with interesting features like Resource rooms, Video chats and the promise of many interactive features, the conference was planned to succeed. But for the technical glitch at the first part of the technical program, the results of the conference were heart-warming. This experience has only motivated us to better ourselves.

Co-hosted by IAPGDBP and Ramana Rehab centre, the conference had attendees from outside Chennai as well.

The conference covered the multiple issues around Autism. Each was aimed at benefitting  clinicians in their practice. Ms.Ida Mary, touched upon the need for evidence and the means to it. She also briefed about how to employ it in practice. Dr.Subramanian threw light on the influence of the gut microbiota on Autism. Dr. Krupa, talked about getting parents involved in communicating about daily routines. Dr.Puneeth Kalra discoursed around the misconceptions about Vaccines and Autism, while Ms.Vipula Rajesh elucidated the transitional journey from online to offline learning in Autism. An engaging panel discussion about behaviors in Autism by Dr. Suneel Godbole, Dr.Sivaprakasam and Ms.Ida Mary was moderated by Ms.Kanagalakshmi. The post lunch session laid the platform for the shortlisted scientific paper presentations and was followed by an engaging workshop on Entrepreneurship by Mr.Pankaj and Ms.Sai Harika Bopanna.

A snapshot of the feedback on the program

The Virtrio platform

Striving as we are as always to give the best of experience to our delegates, this time we engaged an online conference provider Virtrio, the team supported the objectives of the program excellently.  As a gift from us, All the attendees do get free access to the platform till April 30^th, 2022.

When quizzed if people wanted to explore the platform during the access period, we were excited to see the following results:

The winners of the paper presentations are:

First prize: Ms. Kalyani

Second prize: Dr Raghav Kadalraja

Third prize: Ms Hamssika & Mukilan.

Please visit our meeting room to see the paper title and know further details.

There was a prize for creating a social media post on Autism by Threysol solutions and the first prize was for a creation Dysbiosis and symbiosis cartoon by Ms. Kanagalakshmi, second prize was grabbed by Ms.Thilothamal and the third winner was a compilation video of the conference by Ms. George.

The educative as well engaging conference wrapped up to the announcement of NCORE conference In September and with a resolve to do more and better.