As I approach the end of my first year as BSG President, I continue to be inspired by the work that our many dedicated members put into the BSG to ultimately deliver better care to our patients.  

Education remains one of our core activities and we have had a busy programme of events this month, with an excellent meeting on Lynch Syndrome and Hereditary Colorectal Cancer, an Intestinal Ultrasound course, workshops on speaking and chairing, and taster endoscopy courses to inspire the next generation of endoscopists. We have also had some great online education on Mentoring, Chronic Pouchitis, as well as the Endoscopy section’s first ‘Endoscopy Question Time’ on Upper GI Bleeding. Thank you to all those who helped deliver these events. Don't forget to sign up to the next Endoscopy Question Time, which will take place on Wednesday 18th June on the theme of ERCP. 

BSG LIVE in Glasgow is less than a month away and we have a superb programme which can be viewed here. We have a wide range of speakers from the UK and internationally with an excellent Plenary session and nearly 70 symposia, as well as joint sessions with the Chinese Society of Gastroenterology and the British Society for Allergy & Clinical Immunology. In the exhibition you will find a new Sustainability Zone, as well as our largest EndoVillage yet, with everything from simulation stations for new endoscopists, through to advanced procedures like ERCP and ESD. For the first time, we will also have an Intestinal Ultrasound station. Read more and sign up here. 

The BSG is delighted to deliver three high quality journals, Gut, Frontline Gastroenterology and Open Gastroenterology in partnership with the BMJ group. We invite you to a ‘Meet the Editors’ networking session during BSG LIVE, to be held at 12:30 on Wednesday 25th June, following the ‘Gut/Frontline Gastroenterology symposium’. This is a great opportunity to come along and meet the journal editors, Prof Emad El Omar, Dr Phil Smith, and Dr Christian Selinger and to find out more about these journals and how you can get involved.  

Please do not forget to come to the BSG stand during BSG LIVE, where you can find out more about the progress of Project 90 and meet the office team. It’s not too late to register if you haven’t already! 

We have also closed voting for our annual elections for committee members and we are delighted to announce the final results which you can view here - thank you to all who stood and have voted. We also have panel interviews for several senior officers taking place this month. I am delighted to welcome Dr Chris Mountford as the new BSG Secretary, with other results to be announced shortly. 

Another cornerstone of the BSG is our world class guidelines and I am delighted to see guidelines on IBD surveillance, and autoimmune hepatitis published recently. The long awaited IBD guidelines will also be published very soon.   

Another key area of BSG work is our commitment to high-quality research. In April, we were delighted to see the publication of the eagerly awaited results of the BOSS trial. The BOSS trial was a mammoth undertaking, demonstrating the best of collaborative UK research. The long-term nature of the trial gives significance to the results. It is important, however, as with any research, that we look at the results of this trial alongside other evidence. In anticipation of these results, the BSG has a guideline development group currently looking at how Barrett's surveillance should be delivered, and the BOSS trial will form a key part of this process. It is important that guideline groups consider all the evidence and give practical, informative guidance to clinicians. We aim to publish an update on how to manage Barrett's surveillance by the end of this year. We would encourage clinicians to await this update and not to change their practice until full BSG advice is issued. 

The BSG is committed to our trainees, and we recognise the significant challenges they are facing balancing specialty and internal medicine training. Over recent months, we have been engaging widely with stakeholders and decision makers, and we are currently pulling together a blueprint of how we believe gastroenterology and hepatology training should be delivered. Dr Katie Clark, our incoming Training Committee Chair, and Dr Ricia Gwenter, our Trainee Committee Chair, are leading this work and we will be highlighting this further during BSG LIVE.  

The BSG is constantly seeking to be the best organisation it can be and to deliver the best for our members. To support this, we recently invited an external partner to review our governance processes to learn how we can function more effectively. We are now working through their recommendations and looking to see what changes we need to implement. We will keep you updated on our progress. If you have any suggestions on how the BSG can better serve our members, please contact us. 

Finally, I extend my thanks to all of you who have dedicated your valuable time to the BSG - whether you are a committee member, abstract reviewer, award judge, part of a guideline development group, event faculty, or support the BSG in any other way, you all play a key role in the success of the Society and in improving the care of our patients. I hope to see many of you in Glasgow.  

Professor Colin Rees 

BSG President