Dear members of the ESC Working Group on e-Cardiology,
The attention for Digital Health and everything we stand for as Working Group on e-Cardiology has never been greater, certainly also amplified by the need for digital solutions during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Now my chairmanship is nearing its end, it is with gratitude and pleasure that I and with me the entire WG nucleus have been representing and advocating you and your valuable work across all layers of the ESC. Reflecting on the past two years, I find it exciting to see how the awareness and adoption of artificial intelligence, wearables, personalized computer modelling and simulation, and other e-Cardiology topics have gained increasing interest within the ESC family. The launch of the Digital Health Committee, the upcoming new European Heart Journal – Digital Health, the Digital Health Summit, and the large quantity and quality of e-Cardiology – Digital Health sessions at the many ESC conferences are just a few highlights that we as e-Cardiology community have experienced and have been involved in. While I’m writing my last newsletter as chairperson of this WG, I’m convinced that our community and what we stand for will only grow and become more relevant for the future of the ESC.
As you all know, the large ESC conference has been turned into a fully digital experience this year. I encourage and recommend you all to attend and absorb all the excellent science presented in the Live and On-Demand programs. Please have a closer look at my selection of the top-5 sessions on e-Cardiology – Digital Health, which has been communicated along with this newsletter.
Yes, there are some award winners to announce! This year for the first time we are handing out official WG on e-Cardiology Awards at the ESC congress to the two best-graded abstracts submitted in the topic category e-Cardiology – Digital Health. On behalf of the WG Nucleus and membership, I proudly congratulate our first time winners Dr Marinka Oudkerk Pool (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Dr Tina Stegmann (Leipzig, Germany) with their award-winning submissions. I strongly recommend you to watch their presentations in the on-demand program.
In addition, I would like to announce the winning team of the Clinical Needs Translational award competition we organize at the 2020 Computing in Cardiology conference (www.cinc2020.org), September 13-16, Rimini, Italy. I’m pleased to congratulate the multidisciplinary team of scientists, led by Drs Sara Moccia (Ancona & Genoa, Italy) and Enrico Caiani (Milan, Italy), who won the 2020 edition of the CTA team award with their work entitled “A novel approach based on spatio-temporal features and Random Forest for scar detection using cine cardiac magnetic resonance images”. There is still time to register for this excellent conference…no worries, you can choose to attend online or in person, as the CinC conference will be held in a hybrid format.
In June, many of you have casted their vote for the 2020 election of WG Nucleus Members (mandate 2020-2022). We are very pleased to welcome four excellent new Nucleus Members, Emanuela Locati (Italy), Marc Schuuring (Netherlands), Andreu Climent (Spain) and Matthijs Cluitmans (Netherlands). We are looking forward to our collaboration.
I’m very thankful to everyone who contributed to our initiatives and activities, in particular all the WG nucleus members and the ESC WG staff for their invaluable support (THANKS Alexandra and Léa!). I look back at the past two years with gratitude and satisfaction, and I wish our friend and new chairperson, Prof. Polychronis Dilaveris, all the best for the upcoming mandate 2020-2022. I’m confident that he will successfully guide us to grow the Digital Wave in cardiovascular care, science and education.
Wishing you all the best, good health, and wisdom,
Joost Lumens, PhD, FESC
Chairperson ESC WG on e-Cardiology 2018-2020
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Our mission: To reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease.