The BSVP  annual scientific meeting for 2016 was held on 7th and 8th October 2016 at The Engineers’ House in Bristol and covered the themes of Digital and Reproductive Pathology. The first half of Friday was spent covering many aspects of digital pathology. Darren Treanor, a consultant pathologist, but also in charge of the Leeds virtual pathology project gave a great overview of the application and development of digital pathology.  Lou Dawson from IDEXX spoke on the practicalities of digital pathology for a commercial laboratory. Richard Nicholson from Philips spoke briefly on some technical aspects, and joined Darren  Treanor, Lou Dawson and Joelle Pinard  for a discussion panel chaired by Ken Smith. There was a lively and wide ranging discussion, with questions and comments from the floor on many aspects of ‘going digital’.

The remainder of the meeting was devoted to reproductive pathology. Rob Foster from the University of Guelph gave 4 presentations on the ‘Pathology of the Circle of Life’. The emphasis of these talks was on new developments and new thinking as well as a very practical approach to diagnosis. Rebecca Terry’s presentation covered equine placental and neonatal pathology and current pathologies identified in the UK. Tony Blunden’s presentation covered canine neonatal and perinatal pathology.  Mark Stidworthy reminded us that exotic species do not necessarily have exotic disease, but at the same time it is important to be aware of that some species may have special strategies that affect reproductive morphology.

For the first time this year we were able to offer attendees a Mystery Slide box with 5 digital slides kindly organised by Rob Foster. Slides were available to view the week before the meeting and were discussed during the course of the presentations.  A Travel Bursary was awarded to Mary Flook of Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies for her presentation, ‘Picking your brains. Suspected neoplasia in the brains of non domestic species.’

A huge thanks to Sean for organising a fantastic meeting. Everyone enjoyed the rather grand venue and we had a very pleasant leg stretch to the Clifton suspension bridge viewpoint. On Friday night there was a large turnout to dinner at ‘The Pitcher and Piano’ on the Bristol waterfront.    Thank you to all our speakers for a great series of lectures and to all who attended to make this a very successful meeting.

Next year the  annual meeting and AGM will be held in Cambridge with the theme to be announced soon.