Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet © ECCO

Dear Friends,

My first words and thoughts are for you. When we decided that ECCO’21 would be virtual, it was not an easy thing, believe me. And I know that it was probably also a big disappointment for you. However, we all have to take our responsabilities. ECCO is in our heart the most important thing, but the health of thousands of people cannot be put in danger. You will enjoy this format that will be unique and attractive, you can count on us. I really hope that it is the last time that we cannot share a beer and dance together.

Nuha Yassin  © Nuha Yassin

Ignacio Catalán-Serra © Ignacio Catalán-Serra

Dear IBD colleagues and friends,

Warm greetings from the ECCO News Team at the beginning of 2021, after a very challenging year.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in one way or another, we at ECCO have been adapting to the new circumstances.  The ECCO Team have been working hard to continue to uphold the highest standards of care for IBD patients and to provide high-quality research, education and training opportunities.

We have some important announcements to make. Due to the uncertainty over the COVID-19 situation in Europe and around the world, the ECCO Governing Board, in collaboration with the ECCO Office, have taken the very important decision to move from a face-to-face ECCO’21 Congress to a virtual ECCO’21 Congress in order to be able to guarantee deliverability and ensure safety for our ECCO Colleagues and Friends.

The educational programme of the 16^th Congress of ECCO is scheduled one week prior to the official start of the ECCO Congress and all educational courses take place from July 2-3, 2021. These activities target ECCO’s different interest groups including young gastroenterologists, surgeons, paediatricians, pathologists, IBD Nurses, dietitians, allied health professionals and scientists.

The scientific programme will be held from July 8-10, 2021 including Digital Oral Presentations.

An overview of these activities can be found below. In order to get more information please click on the respective course link. For ECCO'21 Virtual overlapping courses can be watched on-demand until end of October 2021. It is foreseen, that delegates who registered for educational courses and/or the scientific programme can claim their CME credits also for on-demand content. We encourage you to register at your earliest convenience.

In addition we are pleased to present already the preliminary programme of the 17^th Congress of ECCO in Stockholm  February 23-26, 2022 below.

We look forward to welcoming you at the 16^th Congress of ECCO Virtual!

Sebastian Zeissig  © ECCO

Dear ECCO Members and Friends, 

ECCO has established Fellowships, Grants and Travel Awards to encourage and support young physicians in their careers and to promote innovative scientific research in IBD.   

Peter Bossuyt © ECCO

During the upcoming ECCO Virtual Congress, ClinCom is organising the 4^th School for Clinical Trialists. One of ClinCom’s aims is to increase the quality of clinical trials in IBD and to provide new insights into the fast-moving field of clinical trial development. Randomised clinical trials (RCTs) are still the gold standard for the development and registration of new treatment options. 

Sophie Restellini  © ECCO

Digital health is a broad concept encompassing categories such as mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (HIT), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, with several aims, one of which  is to foster the development of personalised medicine [1, 2].

Digital care meets the same requirements as in-person medicine (regarding ethics, patient consent, authentication of health professionals, report of consultation in the patient's file). Pre-COVID-19 this model of care was successfully used to monitor patients with a variety of chronic illnesses, and it gained traction after the emergence of COVID-19 because of the emerging need to apply alternative ways of delivering healthcare without human contact.

Pascal Juillerat  © ECCO

Dear ECCO Members,

I hope you and your families are well and you are looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays together, as far as this is possible. In case you missed or would like to re-watch some of the content from the ECCO’21 Virtual Congress that took place last summer – we kindly ask you to visit our e-Library, where all of the recordings can be found.

Henit Yanai  © ECCO

“I’m not a fellow anymore but I would love to have the opportunity to be part of such a course!” This is a quote from a colleague who works in a private practice that I heard on the bus on the way back to Copenhagen airport after ECCO 2019. Thanks to this remark we embarked on this endeavour to hold the 1^st ECCO Postgraduate Course in IBD.  

Hannah Gordon  © ECCO

On Sunday October 11, 2020, all participants of the ECCO Guidelines on Prevention and Management of Infection met with the aim of reaching a consensus on each statement of the guideline. This guideline provides evidence-based insights into the prevention, diagnosis and management of infection in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The project is led by Torsten Kucharzik and Stephan Vavricka, with 25 authors from 15 different countries. This is ECCO’s third guideline on infection in IBD; the first guideline on opportunistic infection was published in 2009, and updated in 2014.

Susanna Jäghult  © ECCO

Following the summary of the ECCO'21 Educational Programme N-ECCO have prepared for you, we are very excited and looking already ahead to the ECCO'22 Congress.

After a year during which most of the focus has been on COVID-19 and most of our meetings have been digital, we can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel and look forward to meeting face to face again. Unfortunately, we need to wait a bit longer and the ECCO Congress will this year be a virtual meeting. We have arranged a lot of very interesting sessions and I hope you all will sign up. But we have also been very active in planning for the ECCO Congress in 2022, which, I am very proud and happy to say, will be held in Stockholm, my home town. I hope to see you all there!