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Assembly of National Sleep Societies – Model to Cooperate among Different Nations

Published in ESRS Newsletter December 2018

The Assembly of National Sleep Societies organized the ANSS Networking Meeting symposia at the recent 24th Congress of the ESRS, that was held in Basel on 27th of September. The EC ANSS chair Liborio Parrino presented the current situation of sleep medicine in Europe and the main difficulties among the different national sleep societies. He emphasized the good model of cooperation among different nations, represented in ANSS under the umbrella of the ESRS, that resulted in many successful projects such as guideline development, task forces and other initiatives to promote sleep medicine in Europe. In his visionary mode he presented the idea of EU sleep broadcasting media. Johan Verbraecken made an insightful review of past ANSS activities and Erna Sif Arnardottir gave a quick overview of recent developments in “Beyond AHI” task force. She also chaired the whole day meeting of this important ANSS-ESRS task force preceding the congress where important progress in task force design had been made. The new chair of the EC ANSS, Barbara Gnidovec Stražišar, named some opened challenges and future perspectives of the ANSS. The networking meeting event was followed by lively open panel discussion in which all EC ANSS members and most of the presidents of the national sleep societies participated.

At the ESRS congress the new composition of EC ANSS step in place. We welcomed three new members Lyudmila Korostovtseva (Russia), Samson Khachatryan (Armenia) and Ysbrand van der Werf (The Netherlands). Always energetic EC ANSS chair Liborio Parrino, ANSS representative in ESRS board Johan Verbraecken, and extremely productive member Erna Sif Arnardottir ended their very successful 4-year mandate and accepted to serve for the next two years as Advisory members of the EC ANSS. After discussion within the EC Barbara Gnidovec Stražišar was nominated as the new EC chair and Oana Deleanu became ANSS representative in the ESRS board, handing over the secretary position to Lyudamila Korostovtseva.

The EC ANSS already started first preparations for the 2019 ANSS annual meeting that will be held May 3 to May 4 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The members of the EC agreed on regular monthly teleconferences and will organize a physical meeting in Amsterdam in January 2019 to finalize the agenda of the ANSS annual meeting.

Barbara Gnidovec Stražišar
Chair of the EC ANSS