The annual Euroson meeting in Leipzig that was held in conjunction with the German speaking countries saw a change in the composition of the Executive Bureau (ExB) of EFSUMB .
Kurt Jäger, Lucas Greiner and Pietro Pavlica finished their term on the board. All of them did an excellent job over the past two years. I would like to thank all of them for their collaboration and their dedication to EFSUMB. I would like to welcome the new members of the ExB, Christian Nolsoe from Denmark as President-elect, Christoph Dietrich from Germany as Honorary Secretary and Ian Sporea from Romania as Treasurer.
David Evans is the Past-President and the continuing role of our General Secretary Gianna Stanford has to be highlighted. Without her efforts the work of all of us and of the committees of EFSUMB would be much more difficult. As you may know the term of office for the ExB and all our committees has been reduced from three to two years. We have to face the fact that Gianna will retire after this next two year term, so we have to find a new General Secretary. This will not be an easy task at all, since a General Secretary has to have really multitasking functions and Gianna has done much more that can be expected from a General Secretary. Also the committees of EFSUMB were newly elected and major changes happened. I want to thank all retiring members for the work they provided to our society and want to welcome the new members.
You can have a look at the Minimal Educational Requirements in several areas that have been produced by the Education and Professional Standards committee on our website (www.efsumb.org). The website has a new design and we will continue to improve this information and communication medium.
The office of EFSUMB has moved from Bromley in the periphery of London to the centre of London. We have rented an office from the British Institute of Radiology at a reasonable cost and I want to thank David Evans for his successful negotiations with BIR.
EFSUMB today is in a healthy and stable position. The membership of EFSUMB increases steadily and will soon reach 20.000 members, so EFSUMB is one of the biggest interdisciplinary medical societies. Also our financial condition allows us to support further educational activities. One major aim is to concentrate on the individual benefits of being an EFSUMB member.
The combined Euroson/Dreiländertreffen in Leipzig this October was really a big success; nearly two thousand participants from 41 countries attended the congress. Mainly through the enormous efforts of Volker Keim this meeting was the most successful interdisciplinary ultrasound congress in Europe to date. As we know Ultrasound congresses are going to have a more and more educational background. But also new science was presented especially dealing with contrast agents. In this area ultrasound gets a giant boost. However US machines have decreased in price significantly during the past years, this is very much appreciated by the users, but for congress organizers it becomes more and more difficult to obtain a balanced budget since industry sometimes decreases their support. New cooperation forms with industry have to be found.
Euroson 2008 will be held in Timisoara from 31th May to 3 rd of June in the western part of Romania. Timisoara has good flight connections often via Vienna. I am sure that Ioan Sporea and his team together with our society will provide a top educational and scientific program with many well known international speakers. Furthermore it is really interesting to visit a country at a time when many changes are happening. During our visit there last May we were all pleased by the hospitality of the local organizers. I think all our constituent societies should support this congress and the science and education in an eastern country by turning up in large numbers at this interesting congress. Both the Romanian ultrasound society and EFSUMB will support young authors. To encourage young scientists to present innovative papers the congress fee will be waived for all accepted first authors below 35 years.
Another success story is our scientific journal "European Journal Ultrasound /Ultraschall in der Medizin". Due to the efforts of Editors, the Review Board and mainly due to the publishing scientists, the impact factor of the journal continues to rise and is now 2.1, the highest figure for a multidisciplinary ultrasound journal. I really hope that we can continue with this success and EFSUMB will support the journal whenever possible. Also the newsletter of UiM will be in new hands; Michael Bachmann from Denmark will take care of this publication and communication medium. The style of the newsletter of EFSUMB will change and a case of the month will be introduced in the homepage of the EFSUMB website.
One important goal will be to optimize the communication with our members, so the National Societies are asked to provide email addresses of all their members. EFSUMB offer a membership certificate to all the member of the National Societies each year.
On demand each national society can obtain a bulk supply of personalized certificates for all their members.
I am open for every new constructive idea and can be easily reached.
Norbert Gritzmann
President EFSUMB
eMail: norbert.gritzmann@bbsalz.at
