Jul
2019
NEWS
ISG BLOG JULY 2019
I am excited and honoured to be your President for the next two years. On your behalf, I would like to thank your former President, Larry Egan, for an excellent job during his tenure. Among his many achievements, he has enhanced the content of our meetings and has persuaded world leaders in gastroenterology and hepatology to speak at our meetings. He will be a hard act to follow but I am glad that he will stay on in our Board and we are still able to benefit from his wisdom.
Over the next two years, we hope that we will be able to deliver on what I call the three Es; E for Education, E for Engagement and E for Europe. With regards to education, we hope that we will be able to build on the content of the meetings by inviting world renowned speakers. We hope that we will be able to post videos of their talks on our website for our members to view. As for engagement, we plan to host our first ever Irish leaders in gastroenterology forum focusing on service and training; the aims of which are to build on relationships between north and south; form strategic networks to improve healthcare for patients with digestive and liver diseases in this island, because as the saying goes “we are stronger together”. On that subject, we are going to have a joint meeting with the Irish Association of Coloproctology on the 15th of May 2020. We also hope to develop new ideas for trainee engagement because trainees are the future of our specialty. As for Europe, we hope to build on our relationships with European societies. We are honoured that the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) have chosen to come to Dublin from the 23 – 25th of April 2020 for their ESGE Days conference. We will have a joint ISG/British Society of Gastroenterology symposium on the 23rd of April at this conference. Our next BIG meeting (British, Irish, Ulster Societies of Gastroenterology) is going to be in Belfast on the 15- 16 April 2021.
I am looking forward to work with our enthusiastic Board and especially Michael Dineen and his team on these initiatives and I hope you share my excitement. I hope to post blogs like this every now and again. I would like to hear from you if you have any comments or suggestions. Please contact me on my email address tctham1234@gmail.com.
Enjoy the rest of the summer!
Tony Tham
President, Irish Society of Gastroenterology
Consultant Gastroenterologist, Ulster Hospital, Belfast, N Ireland
Appendix: Dates for your calendar
Winter meeting, Irish Society of Gastroenterology, Dublin, 21-22 November 2019,
ESGE Days (European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy), Dublin, 23 – 25 of April 2020; joint ISG/BSG symposium on 23/4/20.
Spring meeting, Irish Society of Gastroenterology, 14- 15 May 2020; joint meeting with the Irish Association of Coloproctology on 15/5/2020.
