April 2016 – Assembly of National Sleep Societies (ANSS)
Assembly of National Sleep Societies (ANSS)
The Annual Meeting of the ANSS will take place in Brussels, Belgium (April 28-30 2016). The meeting will take place at the Marivaux Hotel.
Despite the negative international events, the ESRS Board and the ANSS Executive Committee unanimously decided to keep the meeting in Brussels as planned. The decision has been extensively approved by all European Presidents (or their representatives) who have booked and confirmed their attendance (so far, the local organizer Johan Verbraecken has collected a total of 35 participants).
The program includes a number of qualifying issues, including a session dedicated to the Sleep medicine sub-specialty. Thanks to Dirk Pevernagie and his dream team, the opinions and suggestions of the ANSS members will be exposed and discussed to point out possible strategies for obtaining an official recognition of a professional/academic sleep expert profile throughout Europe and in individual European countries.
How different countries deal with the EU directive on driving licenses in the NSS will be explored using an appropriate questionnaire prepared by Marta Gonçalves and completed by the national Presidents.
The opportunity to establish European sleep scoring rules and new research opportunities will be also discussed as well a shared Horizon 2020 project and the freshest news on the upcoming ESRS Congress in Bologna.
The climax of the meeting will be achieved in a special session, “European sleep meets the European Union, Measuring sleepiness: the need for common European rules.” EU officers (belonging to DG Mobility and Transport, Road Safety Unit, Driving Licences and Qualifications for Professional Drivers, Research and Innovation Neuroscience Unit) will discuss leaders the positive impact of awareness campaigns, the effects of excessive sleepiness and insufficient sleep, the need for new educational projects on sleep in Europe and the future perspectives towards Horizon 2020 with ANSS and ESRS.
We wish to thank the Belgian Association for Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine (BASS) for hosting the meeting, and Philips Respironics for the supportive collaboration.
Liborio Parrino
Chair, EC ANSS