Not as a dramatic stage entrance, but as a modern take on the ward round: screen frames instead of door frames, video tiles instead of a circle of chairs. On the left, a camera on a tripod stands there like an extremely conscientious co-host. Several monitors show faces wearing that familiar video-conference expression (focused, mildly skeptical, professionally friendly), and somewhere an MRI image is even held up as if it needs to smile briefly into the camera for the digital audience. The patient, meanwhile, is almost the calmest person in the room: all eyes - pardon, all displays - are fixed on them, while the phone (mercifully) isn’t ringing; it has “joined the meeting.”

And with that, we are right at the topic: the e-case conference, a digitally networked case discussion. It is unspectacular in the best way; not science fiction, but simple common sense: when a case is complex, when multiple perspectives help, when MS is not just “a diagnosis” but a course with many facets, the next appointment turns into collective thinking. Not necessarily in one room, but wherever people happen to be: in Dresden, in the region, in a practice, in a hospital or in another time zone of everyday clinical life.

What makes this so appealing? Expertise suddenly becomes less tied to corridors and commutes. Not long ago, “Let’s get another opinion” often meant: waiting, phone calls, hunting down reports, distributing images on physical media, and trying to align calendars. Today it can mean: log in, look together, discuss. That sounds almost trivial, but it is a major shift when time is a clinical factor and when decisions benefit from neurology, radiology, nursing, therapy, and other disciplines truly looking at the same information at the same moment.

Of course the cartoon exaggerates lovingly: the patient lies there as if they were the star of a medical livestream, leading role, but no microphone. And that is exactly where the useful provocation sits: Who speaks in these conferences and who should? Digital networking can easily become an experts’ party where data opens the dance floor and the person becomes a projection screen. But it can also enable the opposite: patients (if they wish) becoming part of the circle, not the object of discussion, but a partner in it. Because MS cannot be fully captured in MRI slices, lab values, and scoring systems. Many decisive pieces of information live in everyday life: fatigue, cognition, resilience, side effects, life plans. A good e-case conference brings that dimension to the table and when the table is digital, it often becomes bigger.

Naturally, this is not a “laptop open, problem solved” fairy tale. January also reminds us what can derail digital case conferences when they are built the wrong way: technology that demands more attention than the case itself; mountains of data without structure; interfaces that refuse to talk to one another; and data protection that is either ignored (bad) or used as a knockout argument to block everything (also bad). The art lies in the middle: share securely, filter meaningfully, document clearly. And above all: clarify responsibilities. Networking does not replace accountability; it simply makes its distribution more visible.

A perspective worth taking from the cartoon is this: digitalization is not “more screens,” but a more shared view. The best version of an e-case conference is not a TV studio; it is a shortcut to better medicine: fewer detours, fewer delays, fewer “Could you send that again?”, more clarity. It makes specialist knowledge available without anyone having to travel across the country and especially in MS care, it can help decisions happen earlier, more precisely, and more coherently.

Perhaps that is the nicest punchline of January: in the cartoon, an entire universe of screens looks at one person and if we do it right, it creates not pressure, but tailwind. A connected round that does not merely discuss data, but possibilities: What fits this course? What fits this life? What is needed now and what is not?

And then there is the QR code on the page - the small portal you used to reach this text - quietly saying: the discussion does not end in the calendar. It begins there: digitally connected, but hopefully with a very analog goal: care that becomes more human, not more technical.