The Swedish Movement Disorder Society, SWEMODIS, is a society for professionals working with Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders in Sweden. S WEMOD IS presently has around 100 members, mainly physicians, but also experimental scientists, and is an affiliate member society of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.
SWEMODIS was founded in 1995 at a dedicated meeting at the Karolinska Instutute, Stockholm, with most of Sweden’s movement disorder specialists present. At this meeting, Professor Arvid Carlsson gave the key lecture on the history behind the development of L-dopa. For those interested, Arvid Carlsson will give another lecture to this theme in the first symposium of the upcoming MDS International Congress in Stockholm on 8 June 2014.
Together with professor Olle L indvall and professor Göran Steg, Arvid Carlsson is now an honorary member of SWEMODIS. A main activity of SWEMODIS is to organize conferences and symposia. Since 1995, SWEMODIS has been responsible for 42 major meetings on movement disorders. The largest meeting so far was Dopamine 50 years – a meeting around the role of dopamine in health and diseases, which was organized in Gothenburg in 2007 to celebrate the fact that dopamine was first described as a transmittor of its own in Sweden in 1957. This meeting gathered 600 international participants.
SWEMODIS is also responsible for the Swedish national guidelines on diagnosis in treatment of Parkinson’s disease. These guidelines are updated once yearly and are available on SWEMODIS homepage,
www.swemodis.se. The guidelines have been adapted, with some limited changes, by the Swedish Medical Products Agency, as national guidelines for Parkinson therapy.
SWEMODIS is also involved in several educational activities around movement disorders. Twice each year, the society coordinates a one-week course in movement disorders for young doctors that are under specialist
education to become neurologists. SWEMODIS organizes refresher courses for those who are professionally working with Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders.
SWEMODIS research activities are performed within its daughter organisation, SWEPAR. SWEPAR, which was started in 2009, thus represents the research branch of SWEMODIS. SWEPAR has all university neurology departments in Sweden as members, and also the leading experimental research groups working with movement disorder related scientific activities. The main aim of SWEPAR is to stimulate movement disorder related research, both basic, clinical and not least translational projects.
A main project driven by SWEPAR is to set up a national registry of Parkinson’s disease patients in Sweden. This registry was started in 2013 and will cover as many as possible of Sweden’s Parkinson’s patients. The aim is both to get a quality control of Sweden’s Parkinson’s care, but also to serve as a source for research.
Together with the sister organizations in Denmark, Norway and Iceland, SWEMODIS has formed the umbrella organization, the Scandinavian Movement Disorder Society (ScandMODIS; www.scandmodis.org). The aim with ScandMODIS is to stimulate educational and scientific activities on the movement disorder area on a Scandinavian level. ScandMODIS is responsible for the largest Scandinavian meeting on Parkinson’s disease
(the Scandinavian meeting on Parkinson’s disease and related disorders), which takes place once yearly and gathers about 200 participants.
ScandMODIS is also a major partner in organizing the German-Scandinavian meeting on Movement Disorders, which is organized in Kiel and Gothenburg every second year for the past 16 years. ScandMODIS is also responsible for a Scandinavian course for young neurology specialists who want to become movement disorders specialists. This course runs over three years and the participants get their education at six different Scandinavian University Hospitals over a total of 20 days. ScandMODIS is also providing common Scandinavian guidelines for the advanced Parkinson’s therapies (Apomorphine, Levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel and Deep Brain Stimulation).
Finally, ScandMODIS has been a key factor in recruiting the MDS International Congress to Stockholm this year and ScandMODIS has suggested the members of the Congress Local Organizing Committee (CLOC) for this meeting.
SWEMODIS also has very good relations with the Swedish Parkinson Patient Society (Svenska Parkinsonförbundet; www.parkinsonforbundet.se). Together these organizations work for improved information and health care for Parkinson’s in Sweden, and also to stimulate research and education. Together we have initiated a new Internet platform for information on Parkinson’s disease, www.parkinsonguiden.se.
On behalf of SWEMODIS, SWEPAR, ScandMODIS and Parkinsonförbundet, we now warmly welcome MDS and its members to Stockholm on 8-12 June 2014.