CollCom: NEWS 2023

Dear Members, colleagues, and collaborators.

In the Collaboration Committee, many things have happened recently. First, the committee has undergone expansion from three to four members, owing to the increasing responsibility and tasks given to ColCom. Secondly, the term was up for Jacob Begun, and Torsten Kucharzik chose to step down and pursue the role as IBUS Governing Board Treasurer. We from ColCom would like to express our gratitude to Jake and Torsten for all their hard work, ensuring IBUS’s financial foundation by collaborating and encouraging our corporate members to support IBUS and our mission. Further, under Torstens’ lead, they have reshaped the committee from the initial economic focus into a broader collaborative focus that the new committee will now bring forward and refine. We now have well-defined committee charters with clear roles and objectives. Luckily, Torsten will continue his great work as the Governing Board contact person for ColCom.

 

At ECCO ’23, three new members and the new Committee chair were elected: prof. Yoon-Kyo An from Australia, prof. Taku Kobayashi from Japan, and Rune Wilkens from Denmark. With existing ColCom member prof. David Rubin from the US is now the new ColCom, with Rune Wilkens as the chair for the next two years.

 

At ECCO ’23, ColCom hosted a successful first Industry board meeting with representatives from our leading Corporate members. We presented exciting work under development, plans, and outlook with a fruitful discussion. We will repeat this meeting annually at ECCO.

 

IBUS and the implementation of, desire and request for intestinal ultrasound keep growing. To overcome the bottleneck challenges of our existing training model, we open for new workshop concepts. In collaboration with EduCom and ComCom, we added the IBUS-endorsed symposium concept to disseminate intestinal ultrasound awareness further. More info will follow on our homepage and social media soon.

 

New Collaborations in ’23

In 2023, we aim to form new collaborations. We will invent a concept for collaborating with national and regional gastroenterology, IBD, and ultrasound/imaging societies. We hope to engage patient associations and expand our corporate members, including seeking new collaborations with ultrasound machine companies, as we see many opportunities here.

 

Thanks for the continued support by our corporate members (logo presented at the end of the newsletter)

 

On behalf of the IBUS Collaboration Committee

David Rubin, Yoon-Kyo An, Taku Kobayashi, and Rune Wilkens