Among the many challenges faced by physicians caring for patients with COVID-19, one has been to tease out sound scientific information from the multitude of papers, pre-prints, press releases, and media reports promoting unproven therapeutics and diagnostics.
Considering the substantial mortality associated with critical COVID19, the imperative to act must be balanced against the directive to do no harm. In this session, 3 distinguished scientists will take stock of the state of COVID-19 research, highlighting milestones reached in our understanding of the epidemiology, pathobiology, and treatment of this disease.
We will also identify important gaps in our knowledge, and chart the road that lies ahead for the medical and scientific community.

The coronavirus COVID–19 pandemic is the defining global health crisis of our time and one of the greatest challenges we have ever faced. Clinicians treating patients swiftly understood that what is unknown is greater than what is known.
Our approach to evaluation and clinical management evolved rapidly as clinical data emerged.
Yet, many practices such as when/ whether we should use HFNC/ non-invasive ventilation and for how long before we intubate the patient or when to perform tracheostomy remain under local protocols. With increasing numbers of COVID-19 patients, resource allocation as well as ethical issues emerged further complicating clinicians' work and decision making.
Changes forced by COVID-19 also resulted in the acceleration of digital transformation and initiations of ambitious projects that will harness the power of artificial intelligence and medical imaging to fight COVID-19.
All these topics will serve as a platform for this panel discussion.

Any crisis often offers more opportunities than challenges, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception to the rule. Since its emergence in China (less than a year ago), the virus has affected almost every aspect of our lives: the way we interact, interpret data, provide services, learn and teach, as well as compromise with deep-rooted values such as the right to privacy.
The pandemic has also affected public health and clinical research to a great extent. Many of those changes will stay with us well beyond the pandemic.
How society and its attitude toward medicine will look like 5 years from now, is the first question our panelists will address.