President's column

Table of Contents

Dear friends, colleagues and members of EFSUMB,

Two years ago when I was nominated for the President-elect position I felt deeply honoured and accepted with tremendous pleasure and almost zero worries. The closer we got to the "Presidential take over" at EUROSON in Edinburgh, however, the more the ratio between the two - i.e. pleasure and worries - shifted and thus it was with a little bit of shakiness of the hand that I accepted the president's medal during the opening ceremony.

To tell you the truth my deepest concern throughout the last year was that I knew our wonderful, hard-working but still always smiling and high spirited "Jack of all trades" General Secretary Gianna would retire during this congress - with no one to replace her, and poor little me acting as new President.

Then luckily, a few months ago, "Around came Lynne", a barrister by education, with a bag full of all the skills we needed, plus a whole lot more and in addition a smiling and winning attitude. Well, then suddenly my gut feelings for this endeavour is much, much better and I think I am back where I started out: lots of pleasure expected and very few worries. I know the job does not do it by itself and I promise you all, that I will work hard and do my utmost to fulfil my duties to the very best for EFSUMB as an educational and scientific society and for each of you as individual members.

I take this opportunity to thank our Past General Secretary Gianna Stanford for all her efforts and hard work to facilitate and make possible the many functions of our society and its different committees, since she took up her important position back in 1996. Gianna, you have been the very heart of EFSUMB for 13 years and we wish you a happy retirement. You really deserve it.

Founded back in 1972 EFSUMB now is only 38 years old, and despite a generally excellent and healthy condition we have faced the need for a heart transplantation: Lynne Rudd allow me to welcome you in our midst as the new General Secretary. You are the only person in the EFSUMB organisation with the potential of providing continuity. The rest of us come and go. Your position is extremely important to the life of EFSUMB and our expectations of you are high. Despite this, working with you for 3 months now, I dare say, you exceed them by far and I wish you and EFSUMB a prosperous future together.

2009 has been an extremely turbulent year. Big companies and banks have collapsed around the globe and some countries have been, or are, on the verge of bankruptcy. The world economy, as we know it, is at stake. In this very unfortunate scenario, EFSUMB, as you can read in the Honorary Treasurers report elsewhere in this newsletter, is happy to be in a strong financial position.

EFSUMB has no interest in accumulating money. According to our constitution we are put in this world to promote the exchange of scientific knowledge in the field of medical ultrasound. This is one of the major objectives of EFSUMB. Our aim is to build an educational portal on the web for the use of ultrasound in medicine and biology.

It is therefore a great pleasure that our beneficial financial situation gives us the economic power to invest time and money in providing free education not only to our numerous members, but actually to anybody who has internet access.

I wish to direct a sincere thank to all members of the EFSUMB Executive Bureau (ExB) and our three committees: Education and Professional Standards Committee (EPSC), Publications Committee and European Committee of Medical Ultrasound Safety (ECMUS) for all the hours and hard work each of you has put in throughout this last term. Particularly the joint efforts to establish a strong educational database is noteworthy and must be emphasized in the future.

Throughout the last two terms I have had the pleasure of serving on the EPSC. During my first term with David Linsell as chairman I saw the list of guidelines and recommendations grow towards its present stage where it covers most major ultrasound subspecialties. As a consequence of this, during the chairmanship of Odd Helge Gilja, the focus this past year has changed towards the creation of an ultrasound educational web portal and also to strengthening the EUROSON School concept. Thus, 2009 saw a total of six EUROSON Schools three of which were part of a newly established series of CEUS post graduate courses facilitated by BRACCO sponsorship. The success continues as several courses are scheduled for next year.

This has been paralleled by the Publications Committee initiative of developing a web-based EFSUMB Course Book (ECB) to provide educational material for EUROSON Schools. As you read this the ECB will be under way with Christoph Dietrich as editor.

ECMUS has its own Micro Site with tons of information about safety of medical ultrasound and the literature thereof. The Micro Site is accessed from the main EFSUMB page, and it is continuously updated. Please, click your way to the world of ultrasound safety and educate yourself on this important issue.

I intend to make it my major goal for the coming term to support the efforts of creating a superb educational portal and focus on expanding the material found on our homepage. Our aim is to have a free accessible database with educational multimedia materials of all kinds. Guidelines, tutorial articles, picture gallery, case reports, "State-of-the-art" presentations, "how-to-do-it-videos" etc should be available on all major topics in medical ultrasound. Some of it you can already find at our website www.efsumb.org. A lot of it needs to be implemented.

If you have not yet tried it, I urge you to have a look for yourself at what is already there. On the front page you will find 2 of the most popular hits of our web site. The flash presentations from the "EUROSON School - Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound in Liver, Biliary, Pancreatic and Gastrointestinal Disease" in Bologna, September 2009 with Fabio Piscaglia and Luigi Bolondi as course directors and "Case of the Month" most of which up until now has been provided by Christoph Dietrich. We hope for the future that you, the members of EFSUMB, will be so kind and share your exciting cases with the rest of us. We strongly encourage you to do so by contacting EFSUMB Newsletter Editor, Michael Bachmann Nielsen.

Building a European ultrasound community is the EFSUMB motto, and we are right at it. During EUROSON 2009 in Edinburgh the Board of Directors voted for accepting Lithuania as a new member. This brings our numbers to 30 member societies and a total of 19,527 individual members. Allow me to express a warm welcome to the Ultrasound Society of Lithuania and its 51 members. You are now a part of the world's largest ultrasound society. If you go to the web site and click on the left side, number 2 down, menu point "Membership" you can read what advantages this includes for you as a society as well as individual members.

Among other things, each year you will receive the first issue of EFSUMB official journal "Ultraschall in der Medizin/European Journal of Ultrasound" (UiM/EJU). This is the world's highest-ranking interdisciplinary ultrasound journal with an Impact Factor of 2.394. Eleven of the 30 EFSUMB member societies have signed up to bulk subscription at a greatly reduced price, making UiM/EJU the official national journal of these societies and delivering the journal to the front door of each individual member 6 times annually.

I strongly suggest the Ultrasound Society of Lithuania, along with the other non-bulk-subscribing societies, consider joining this advantageous arrangement.

Doppler’s effect on EFSUMB’s new President

Allow me to take this opportunity to thank my immediate predecessors in the President position for all their efforts to promote EFSUMB. Norbert Gritzmann is now serving on the ExB as Past-President and I am looking forward to our continued collaboration. David H Evans as the previous Past-President has left the ExB. David is now Honorary Secretary to WFUMB and I am sure he will do an equally excellent job there as he did in EFSUMB. It has been a great pleasure working with both of you, and I think back to many memorable situations and fun hours in between all the hard work. I especially remember my first ExB meeting. It took place in Salzburg on January 5th 2008 - my birthday! At this point you may think I found the meeting per se so interesting I can't get it out of my head. Sorry to disappoint you, not so. This, however, was my first physical encounter with one of my professional heroes Christian Andreas Doppler. I met him at the Salzburg Science Museum. He was all stoned, as you can see from the picture.

Finally, I wish to congratulate BMUS and President Julie Walton for a highly professional and well organised EUROSON 2009. On behalf of EFSUMB please accept our sincere thanks to you and your staff at BMUS and all the persons in your organisation for all the efforts and hard work you all put into making this project a memorable and successful event.

Next stop is Wonderful Copenhagen, August 22-25. Please, mark your calendars. Come see us at www.euroson2010.org.

Let me know if you have visions for EFSUMB.

Christian Pállson Nolsøe
EFSUMB President

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