Marieke Pierik © ECCO

The World Health Organisation defined health in 1948 as a status of complete physical, psychological and social well-being. Complete well-being is, however, difficult to obtain and even harder to maintain, bearing in mind that over 50% of adults suffer from a chronic disease, people are living longer than ever and continuous environmental influences are resulting in physical or mental symptoms. Therefore, health was recently redefined as a dynamic status of subjective physical, psychological and social well-being. Health care is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, injury or other physical or mental impairments in people. Patient-reported outcomes are outcomes directly reported by patients without prior interpretation by health care professionals. Compared with clinical outcomes (e.g. corticosteroid use, hospitalisation, surgery), they provide a more holistic interpretation of the effect of interventions or a condition on people by also taking into account the patient perspective and psychological and social aspects.

Naila Arebi © ECCO

While the traditional role of epidemiology was the study of communicable diseases, it has evolved to a modern approach geared towards the study of the increasing incidence of non-communicable chronic diseases. Epidemiology may be defined as the collection of large sample sizes and the measurement of numerous variables from stored samples to facilitate estimation of disease risk over time, and may involve the development and use of new techniques to acquire dependent and independent variables [1]. Nevertheless, the traditional view of epidemiology remains embedded as the study of epidemics. In studying Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) as an epidemic, several aspects were addressed at ECCO'19 Copenhagen Congress, including changes in the incidence/prevalence of IBD in different populations (countries), effects of therapy on surgical rates, the incidence of complications such as colorectal cancer, the impact of treatment patterns and findings in smaller sub-populations such as patients with elderly-onset and perianal Crohn’s Disease (CD). Although the modern definition carries a risk that studies will be conducted without a specific hypothesis thereby generating statistically significant observations of no clinical relevance nor benefit, the studies presented at ECCO 2019 addressed clinically important questions.

Marieke Pierik © ECCO

The mission of the Epidemiological Committee of ECCO is optimisation of epidemiological research methods in Europe. During the ECCO Congress in Copenhagen, EpiCom said goodbye to Laurent Beaugerie and Nynne Nyboe-Andersen. We greatly thanked them for all their contributions to EpiCom and welcomed two new members from two different countries: the Netherlands and France.  

Valerie Pittet © ECCO

Marieke Pierik  © ECCO

The FAIR Data Principles propose that scientific outputs should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable [1]. Their aim is to encourage the adoption of good practices with respect to the publication of scientific research data. To this purpose, they provide a list of recommendations regarding documentation of data and datasets that are designed to be helpful for researchers and for computers.

Marieke Pierik © ECCO

The Epidemiological Committee of ECCO (EpiCom) works for the optimisation of epidemiological research in the field of IBD across Europe. Epidemiology focusses on the factors that influence health, the control and long-term outcome of diseases and the measurement of health outcomes. Epidemiology is data driven and to avoid bias and guarantee validity, systematic data collection, meticulous study design and careful selection of the population and method of analysis are crucial.

Naila Arebi © ECCO

Collaborations are the cornerstone of research studies – from inception of the idea to execution of the project, culminating in the final research goal of generating and sharing new knowledge. Information technology has transformed the way we collaborate, opening up new avenues for collaboration through enhanced remote communication between researchers as well as easier collation and sharing of research data across centres.

Naila Arebi © ECCO

An introduction to pharmaco-epidemiology: How to interpret real world data for clinical practice 

The Epidemiological Committee (EpiCom) organised their 4^th workshop at the ECCO’18 Congress in Vienna.  Delegates were welcomed by Ebbe Langholz, who introduced the sessions with a short video on the UR-CARE database to illustrate the importance of databases and their potential across Europe. 

Marieke Pierik  ©  ECCO

The Epidemiological Committee (EpiCom) of ECCO promotes epidemiological research within the field of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) across Europe. Population-based cohort studies on disease course and prognosis are of great interest for IBD epidemiology since in these cohorts a sample or all of the cases in a defined population are selected for longitudinal assessment of exposure–outcome relationships.