Silvio Danese  ©  ECCO

Dear ECCO friends,

Improving the care of IBD patients is one of ECCO’s most valuable purposes. This goal is achieved through enhancement of our knowledge of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. Two programmes highlighted in this issue of ECCO News move in this direction: The UR-CARE database, which seeks to achieve this goal through intense collaboration between researchers in Europe via a shared database, and the e-CCO Learning Platform, which many of you had the opportunity to experience during the 13th ECCO Congress in Vienna. This intiative is particularly exciting because it offers physicians a tool to fill in learning gaps using the ECCO IBD Curriculum. Both of these tools will contribute to reinforce the excellence of IBD centres.

Pieter Hindryckx © ECCO

Willem Bemelman

Position: Secretary 2018–2020

Nationality: Dutch

Born: December 17, 1958

Past ECCO Positions: 
     • Co-founder of S-ECCO
     • S-ECCO Chair
     • Chair, Surgical ECCO Guidelines on Crohn’s Disease

Laurence J. Egan © ECCO

Dear ECCO Friends,

As with every year, the ECCO Congress in Vienna was the occasion for the Editorial Team of the Journal of Crohn’s and Colitis (JCC) – including the Associate Editors (AE) and the Editorial Board Members – to meet in order to evaluate the achievements of the previous year and to discuss new projects and ideas with the aim of keeping JCC at a high level of quality in the field of gastroenterology and hepatology journals with a focus on Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. I would like to seize this opportunity to introduce you to the new Associate Editors and Editorial Board Members who joined the JCC team at the ECCO Congress and over the past few months.

Johan Burisch © ECCO

The “United Registries for Clinical Assessment and Research” (UR-CARE) database is an IBDIM (IBD in Motion, the research unit of ECCO) initiative to facilitate daily patient care and research studies in IBD in centres and/or research groups across Europe. The UR-CARE database [1] offers comprehensive data collection, including data on disease characteristics, diagnostic procedures (such as endoscopy or imaging), medical and surgical treatments, and laboratory tests. Several databases developed for use in IBD already exist, but usually these have been implemented in clinical practice or research studies without validation. 

Dear ECCO Friends,

We would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to all of you who stopped by at the UR-CARE Training Centre to familiarise yourselves with your potential own new patient registry for the future.  

Isabelle Cleynen © ECCO

With the Y-ECCO Basic Science Workshop, Y-ECCO aims to give basic science, and young clinicians doing basic science or full-time researchers, a more visible platform within ECCO and the ECCO Congress. We also want to promote scientific exchange and networking among (young) basic scientists. Each edition of the workshop features two top-notch speakers and experts in their field who give state of the art overviews on the session topics and are then invited to join the discussions following oral abstract presentations by Y-ECCO Members. The two sessions of this year’s workshop focussed on “In vivo perils in IBD” and “Ex vivo promises in IBD”. 

Nuha Yassin © ECCO

Dear Y-ECCO Friends,

In our series of Y-ECCO corner interviews, we are adding a new flavour for 2018 by conducting a tandem interview with the IBD giants. Today, I am delighted to be joined by Ailsa Hart and Willem Bemelman, who are respectively a leading gastroenterologist and leading surgeon in the world of IBD. We have all heard them give tandem talks and look forward to finding out more about them in this tandem interview. Many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed, Ailsa and Willem. We’ll ask you similar questions and see if the answers are similar or different.

Nuha Yassin
Y-ECCO Interview Corner Coordinator

Nuha Yassin © ECCO

Dear Y-ECCO Friends,

This is my first Members’ Address as the newly elected Y-ECCO Chair after being a Committee Member for the past 3 years. I have succeeded Isabelle Cleynen (Leuven), who was a fantastic chair and a great friend. I had the pleasure of previously working with Tim Raine and Pieter Hindryckx, who were also exemplary in their leadership of Y-ECCO, and I am delighted to be able to keep in touch with them. Y-ECCO truly creates solid bonds and I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to work with past Committee Members and Chairs as well as the current fantastic Committee.

Roger Feakins © ECCO

The 3^rd Histopathologists of ECCO (H-ECCO) Masterclass took place in Vienna on February 15–16, 2018.

Since its formation in 2016, the Histology Working Group of ECCO (H-ECCO) has organised a successful annual educational Masterclass. The 3rd H-ECCO Masterclass at the 2018 ECCO Congress in Vienna ran on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. It coincided with an important event: The official conversion of the H-ECCO Working Group to a full committee on the Thursday evening.  Attendance at the Masterclass was good (over 70 registrants) and the audience comprised a mixture of histopathologists and gastroenterologists from Europe and further afield.

David Wilson © ECCO

The first International Symposium on Paediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease (PIBD) took place in Rome in 2006 and was hosted by Salvatore Cucchiara. It was followed by the second PIBD Symposium in 2009 in Paris, hosted by Frank Ruemmele. Both were private initiatives. After a pause while plans to alternate PIBD Symposia between venues in Europe and North America were considered, the paediatric IBD Porto group of ESPGHAN took over all organisation. This resulted in the 3^rd Symposium in Rotterdam in 2014, hosted by Hankje Escher.