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Report of the Assembly of National Sleep Societies (Parma, 4-5 May 2018)

The Annual Meeting of the ANSS in the ESRS was held in Parma, Italy on May 4 and 5, 2018.

The event was preceded by the ANSS-ESRS “Beyond AHI” Task Force chaired by Erna Sif Arnardottir.

After the warm welcome of local authorities, an overview by Barbara Strazisar on the information collected from all the ANSS countries introduced the presentation of the single sleep societies who illustrated the single most important topics achieved in their nation.

Michaela Gjersted and Marta Gonçalves chaired the session on “Sleep medicine as a subspecialty”. After the udate of Dirk Pevernagie, the assembly followed and discussed the achievement and perspsectives of the French post-specialization model (Damien Leger) and the Romania competency model (Oana Deleanu).

The program continued with a session entitled “Pending Opportunities”. The results of a survey conducted on GPs in Italy were presented by Chiara Gado, followed by a lecture by Roberto Manfredini on chronobiology in honor of the 2017 Nobel Prize assigned to the Circadian Rhythms. Barbara G. Stražišar explained the pros and cons of daylight saving time while the great majority of the ANSS members voted in favor of a European initiative to abolish the time changes every 6 months.

In the session on “Big Data – 4th Industrial Revolution”, chaired by Johan Verbraecken and Barbara G. Stražišar, deep learning potential was described by the computer expert Jacky Mallett, while Raffaele Ferri proposed to arrange a sleep recording digitalized platform for Europe.

The final part of the program, chaired by Walter McNicholas and Oana Claudia Deleanu, was dedicated to the ESRS activities where special emphasis was focused on the new organization and goals of the Sleep Medicine Committee (Dirk Pevernagie) and on the innovative projects of the Web Committee (Bogdan Voinescu).

A lively discussion took place during the session dedicated to sponsors (Philips, Bioprojet), when Philips shared information on the available and pipeline tools for sleep medicine and sleep health.

Finally, the ANSS business meeting established that the next annual events will be held in St. Petersburg (Russia) in 2019 and in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 2020.

Three new EC members were elected: Lyudmila Korostovtseva (Russia) Samson Khachatryan (Armenia), Ysbrand van der Werf (The Netherlands). Erna Sif Arnardottir, Liborio Parrino and Johan Verbraecken ended their 4-year term and will serve for the next two years as Advisory Members of the EC ANSS. We wish to thank Michaela Gjersted and Marta Gonçalves for their keen and professional commitment dedicated to all the ANSS activities in the last 6 years.

The meeting was accompanied by fair weather and excellent food especially served during the Welcome dinner at the Angiol D’Or Restaurant (illuminated by the magic vision of the Duomo and the Baptister) and at the amazing Labirinto della Masone where the Gala dinner, offered by the Italian Association of Sleep Medicine, was enjoyed at the prestigious Spigaroli Restaurant. Before the farewell toasts, awards were assigned to the winners of the best national presentations: Russia (1st prize), Portugal (2nd prize), Estonia (3rd prize).

The positive mood of all attendees made the meeting a memorable event. In a dark period in which European countries show more conflicts than agreements, the ANSS model remains a powerful example of how affairs and issues should be conducted among nations that share a common culture and a common land.

Liborio Parrino
Chair, EC ANSS