On November 14, 2019, the sixth Biosecurity Knowledge Day took place in which colleagues from all over the country gathered to discuss biosecurity from different perspectives.
As in previous years, the sixth Biosecurity Knowledge Day consisted of a plenary session in the morning and parallel sessions in the afternoon. During the morning session, there was room for an update on the legislation process of biosecurity in the Netherlands. The subsequent presentation involved several biosafety and biosecurity dilemmas in a high-risk facility. Jop Groeneweg entertained the audience in an entertaining way in the world of risk management and behavioral change. You can tell someone to put on their seat belt, but you can also integrate an annoying beep that forces you to put it on. "The annoying beep is then a problem that is solved by putting on the seat belt". A kind of negative stimulus to provoke good behavior. How can you apply this for biosafety? The last morning presentation was given by a colleague from the Danish Center for Biosecurity and Biopreparedness on the assessment of dual use research and how it is arranged in Denmark.
Parallel sessions
After lunch there was a choice of five sessions, dual use: unambiguous research; Biotechnological products and processes with minimal biosafety and biosecurity risks; Biosecurity in your organization; Biosecurity in the picture and Biosecurity through the eyes of the environmental services, GGD Regional Health Services and safety regions. The presentations of the sessions can be found here.
Evaluation
After the day, more than half of the participants completed the evaluation form. In general, the day was well received and met expectations. The positive points are the varied program, the interaction and the opportunity to network. Points that we will certainly consider next year are the length of the workshops, the space in the room of the plenary session and the recognisability of colleagues who work in the same field (for example, hospital, biotech, construction, etc.).
Save the date - November 19, 2020
The date for the seventh Biosecurity Knowledge Day has already been set, but the program is still completely open! We keep room for new developments and would like to hear what participants need. So if you have suggestions for the next year's program, or if you have something interesting to contribute: let us know! biosecurity@rivm.nl