Carta al editor
To all interested in electronic and other engineering applications in cardiology
11th April 2013
I would like to introduce the working group on e-Cardiology of the European Society of Cardiology.
This Working Group, one of the constituent bodies of the European Society of Cardiology, was established more than 20 years ago, under the name “Computers in Cardiology”. More recently, the name of the Working Group changed to “e-Cardiology” reflecting not only the reality that computers are now much more widespread compared to decades ago, but also the fact that electronic and other engineering input has been the driving force of many advances in clinical cardiology.
The goal of our Working Group is to provide a communication platform for specialists involved in different technological areas of cardiology, both on the engineering and on the clinical sides. To serve this goal, the Working Group is involved in a number of activities. We closely collaborate with the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) as well as the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI). Indeed, our members are, among others, heavily involved in noninvasive cardiac electrophysiology and in image processing, dealing with both technical and clinical aspects.
Our group aims at producing consensus documents, position statements, technical guidelines and scientific reviews. For the authorship of these publications we invite the members of our Working Group who have the appropriate expertise. We also organise our annual meetings; last year we met in Osijek, Croatia; this year we shall organise our meeting as a dedicated part of the EHRA Congress in Athens. We have also substantially contributed to the general programme of the EHRA Congress.
The success of the Working Group in these goals depend on our having a critical mass of understanding and expertise among the members. Therefore, we would like to invite all those interested in these fields to become members of the Working Group. The membership will not only facilitate communication among scientific and professional peers but it will also allow the members to propose research directions and to influence the development of the field, establishing standards, and synchronizing research efforts. Technologically orientated members of the Working Group will benefit from having access to a substantial collection of clinical data while the clinical members of the group will benefit from having their data analyzed by novel progressive technologies developed by the engineering group.
The membership of the Working Group is organized by the European Society of Cardiology and is open to everybody who works or is professionally interested in this field. There are no membership fees of the Working Group and the application for membership can easily be made electronically on the website of the European Society of Cardiology: after creating a “MY ESC” account on www.escardio.org, please go to http://www.escardio.org/communities/Working-Groups/e-cardiology/Pages/Membership.aspx and follow the instructions. No prior membership of the European Society of Cardiology is needed (our members are automatically becoming members of the European Society of Cardiology).
I very much hope that a number of specialists in the field will join us, making the e-Cardiology network very successful not only across Europe but also well beyond.
Marek Malik
Chairman of the Working Group