Late-breaking describes news that becomes relevant in the immediate lead-up to a deadline. It is typically characterized by a sense of urgency or importance, such as a severe weather event, political event, natural disaster, or other significant events that could impact people’s lives. In the past, television and radio stations often interrupted regular programming with “cut-ins” of breaking news for these types of incidents. The 24-hour news channel model has changed this by allowing programs to break with alert crawls and special report tickers when a news event occurs.
The MDS 2025 Late-Breaking Abstracts program is designed to recognize new, critically important research developments that have become available for public dissemination after the regular abstract submission deadline and prior to the start of the International Congress. These are highly selective abstracts that will be presented in dedicated sessions during the meeting.
Submissions must be novel, substantive, and not replicate existing work (e.g., small confirmatory studies, rating scale validation). The MDS 2025 Scientific Program Committee has a zero-tolerance policy for duplicate/cross-over presentations and therefore cannot accommodate abstracts that have already been presented at another conference or meeting. MDS also does not consider case reports, qualitative surveys, practice reviews, and system prototypes for the Late-Breaking Abstracts track.