Eight doctors and one pharmacist from Central and Eastern Europe, including Slovenia, were honoured for their outstanding research achievements as the International Medis Awards for Medical Research were handed out for the 11th year in Ljubljana on 13 March.

Paediatrician Alja Kavčič from the Ljubljana University Medical Centre (UKC) won the award as the lead author of the paper EEG Alpha Band Functional Brain Network Correlates of Cognitive Performance in Children after Perinatal Stroke, which was published in Neuroimage.

The study investigates functional brain networks in children and adolescents after perinatal stroke using EEG connectivity. It examines how brain network organization relates to cognitive functions such as intelligence, visual-motor integration, and attention, aiming to improve understanding of neurodevelopment after perinatal stroke.

By leveraging EEG the study demonstrates its potential for monitoring cognitive functions and guiding targeted rehabilitation treatments, according to the explanation of the award.

Apart from Kavčič, the winners also included Damian Meyersburg, Austria, for dermatology, Marija Rovčanin, Serbia, for gynaecology, and Martin Balík, Hana Mojžišová and Juraj Timkovič from the Czech Republic, for intensive care medicine and anaesthesiology, neurology and ophthalmology, respectively.

The awards also went to Dragana Milaković, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for pharmacy, and Serbian doctors Aleksandra Plavšić (pulmonology and allergology) and Ana Banko (rheumatology).

The winners were selected from 197 nominations from a total of 251 entries from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia.

Borut Štrukelj, the head of the International Scientific Committee, said they have again reviewed outstanding scientific papers. He congratulated all the authors whose research met the high standards required for publication in the most prestigious scientific journals.

"This project demonstrates that Slovenia can and should play an important role in recognising and promoting cutting-edge science across Central and Eastern Europe," President Nataša Pirc Musar said in her keynote address.

The awards were founded in 2014 on the initiative of Medis, a Ljubljana medical marketing company. Tone Strnad, the awards and the company founder, said the goal was to promote the achievements of medical doctors and pharmacists who were conducting research alongside their daily work with patients.

Medis has been working with leading global pharmaceutical companies for 35 years to bring new innovative treatments to 19 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, said Maja Strnad Cestar, Medis CEO. "Our goal is to ensure equality of therapies for patients, regardless of which country they come from," she added.