ESGE News and Upcoming Events January 2021

On behalf of the ESGE Governing Board, please allow me to wish you and your families a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2021. I also wish to take this opportunity to look back at our many activities in 2020, and our perspectives for the upcoming year.

One year ago, we announced the launch of the ESGE strategic planning process that has now been successfully concluded having a formal strategic plan document as an output, including an extensive review and update of our bylaws.

Both our strategic plan and the updated bylaws are now available at the society’s website (www.esge.com). Our vision as a society is to work together to provide to our community the professional tools to provide optimal patient care through high quality GI endoscopy.

Our mission is to continuously support education, training, and innovation towards that vision. In summary, three major pillars were established – to continue very strong scientifically, to promote and grow our major annual educational congress (ESGE Days) while at the same time embracing the e-world through online initiatives such as eLearning, and continue to interact with and involve all our stakeholders. And of course, to implement these plans in an explicit and financially sustainable structure.

2020 will be remembered in history for a unique situation for humankind – the COVID-19 pandemic. This affected all of us, not only on a personal level, but also on a professional level, with challenges never faced before.

On behalf of all of those who volunteered their time on behalf of ESGE activities during this ongoing pandemic, allow me to express mine, our, extreme honour by having the chance to serve ESGE and our community during this “storm”.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated ESGE to adapt and alter its internal workflows and some of our educational activities. Despite these changes, ESGE has maintained its focus and mission and I wish to thank all who have worked extra hard this past year to ensure ESGE’s ongoing success!

As the term of the current ESGE Governing Board comes to an end in March 2021, I would like to highlight some of our achievements. Starting with the increased number of written outputs from all our committees and working groups. This includes ESGE guidelines and quality documents, as well as our curricula papers, technologies reviews, and position statements. All these published in the scientific journal Endoscopy – with the highest impact factor in the field of GI endoscopy.

Moreover, the weekly online Seminars Wednesdays and our online educational programmes (myESGEtutor). We have also developed an updated approach to being a facilitator in the field of GI endoscopy research by revising the process for funding research grant proposals, by endorsing and also awarding more money for meritorious research initiatives from our members. Finally, I am very happy to report that our membership continues to steadily grow, we are now at almost 3,000 individual members.

We have also upgraded two of our working groups to full committees: The ESGE Young Endoscopists (EYE) Committee and the Public Advocacy Committee (PAC). Both of these committees will allow ESGE to further grow and better serve its members and the European public at large.

Finally, the entire ESGE leadership is actively involved and working hard to deliver the best meeting in the field of gastrointestinal endoscopy – ESGE Days. In 2021, an augmented version of ESGE Days will be presented to our community. ESGE Days 2021 will go virtual but will continue to deliver to our community a diverse scientific program, lively interactions, and didactic discussions. The online ESGE Days 2021 is being developed and organized by our Scientific Committee and will “cover” the entire field of GI endoscopy.

We will continue to have predefined educational pathways and a variety of exciting educational forums – guideline presentations and debates, educational endoscopy videos and live endoscopy demonstrations, case-based presentations with expert-led discussions and of course original research presentations, both oral and poster presentations. We will also have special programmes in collaboration with our member societies and our worldwide endoscopy society partners including WEO, ASGE, A-PSDE, JGES, KSGE, EGEUS and of course ESGENA.

Again, I am honored and humbled to be the President of ESGE and wish once again, on behalf of ESGE, to you and your families, a very happy New Year!

Mário Dinis-Ribeiro
ESGE President

Publication History

Article published online:
17 December 2020