| EDF Newsletter September 2022

The 26th EDF Annual Meeting is planned to take place from January 19-21, 2023 as a face-to-face meeting in the Hotel Suisse Majestic in Montreux. The program starts with our traditional plenary guest lectures. This year Dr. Robert Finn, EMBL-EBI, Cambridge will speak about “Role of microbial communities in skin health and disease”, followed by a lecture on “Mosaic abnormalities of the skin” by Prof. Veronica Kinsler from the UCL GOS Institute of Child Health in London. Further plenary lectures will follow on Friday afternoon with Dr. Sanja Vickovic, the Broad Institute, MIT and Harvard, Boston, speaking about the “Application of Spatial Transcriptomics to Understanding Disease Pathogenesis” and Prof. Tamar Nijsten, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, on “Big data and implications to dermatology”. Two well-established highlights will be our interactive forums. The first one on Teledermatology, chaired by Prof. Marie-Aleth Richard, CHU de Marseille, includes Prof. Paola Pasquali discussing the “Types of teledermatology, chances and dangers” and Prof. David Moreno Ramirez who will talk on “Teledermatology during COVID 19 and the Spanish Teledermatology experience”. Additionally, Prof. Claire Fuller will present on “Teledermatology - a chance for underserved patients in resource limited settings? “. This session will close with an interactive discussion on general Teledermatology. The second forum moderated by Prof. Thomas Krieg, Cologne Cluster of Excellence, will be on aging. Prof. Björn Schumacher will speak about “basic mechanisms of aging”, while Prof. Christopher Griffith and Prof. Heyo K. Kroemer will discuss “skin aging” and the “impact of aging on healthcare and associated diseases”, respectively. The program will be complemented by industry symposia and commission groups. I am certain that we can all look forward to productive and interactive discussions on these stimulating topics. To register and make hotel reservations please refer to the EDF homepage: https://www.formoffice.com/en/Public/Index/6158 (registration deadline October 7 th, 2022).

| Euroderm Excellence

After two virtual courses in 2021, we intend to conduct the 18th “EDF Euroderm Excellence” course live again on November 15-18, 2022 at the A.Roma Hotel in Rome (Italy). This course will be once again supported by Lilly. Excellent candidates have already been selected (100 participants out of 169 applications in total) and the program is finalized. For more information kindly see our website: 

| EDF Advanced Euroderm Excellence Program

After the successful launch of the new “EDF Advanced Euroderm Excellence” course in 2022, the EDF Board has decided to conduct the course again at the next EDF Annual Meeting in January 2023. Twenty carefully selected participants from the original “EDF Euroderm Excellence” course, who are promising future opinion leaders in our specialty, have been invited to participate in this course. The aim of the program is to provide training in areas such as managing a clinical department, risk management, role of global dermatology, compliance regulations etc. and to strengthen skills in these areas. The course is also designed to further stimulate the dermatological careers of the participants. Renowned dermatologists will provide lectures on grantwriting, lecturing skills, but also provide overviews on career planning. 

| White Book

The 6th edition the EDF White Book was updated in 2020 and included new chapters on important topics in dermato-venereology such as specific infections, body dysmorphic syndrome and psychologic impact of skin diseases or nutritional deficiencies and skin disorders. The White Book describes in general the burden of skin and sexually transmitted infections within Europe and shows how provision of care and costs vary across the continent. A directory of national dermatological associations, European dermatology societies and patient organizations, is included to provide a complete and valuable resource that will be useful to everyone involved in health care policy decision making. The White Book should be of interest to a broad spectrum of policy makers including medical schools and hospital administrators, as well as politicians, health care providers, physicians belonging to different medical disciplines, the pharmaceutical and medico-technical industry, patient support groups and not at least dermato-venereologists. A new digital Edition 7 is planned.

| EDF Guidelines

Currently, the EDF is the main promoter of the Centre for Guidelines Development (EuroGuiDerm) in collaboration with Prof. Alexander Nast from the Division of Evidence-Based Medicine, Department of Dermatology, Charité University, Berlin. The Centre is also advised and supported by renowned experts in the field. The project aims to foster high-quality guidelines through harmonized methodologies that ensure alignment with current gold standards, under a systemized structure and with a continuous update process. Further, for those diseases whose management is rapidly evolving we are developing “living guidelines”. The governance includes a Board of Directors, with external advisers. Following initial and ongoing funding provided by EDF, the guidelines project is additionally supported by pharma companies and national societies (https://www.edf.one/de/home/Guidelines/Support---Organisation.html). Importantly, the structure of EuroGuiDerm means that the pharma companies have no influence on the guidelines topics chosen or on their production. We are currently looking to further improve the structure and collaborations of the guidelines network and are working closely with the EADV to formulate a more inclusive guidelines network across Europe. 

The EDF Guidelines APP offers a useful tool that helps dermatologists to select the most appropriate treatment for individual patients. The APP contains the PSORIASIS, ACNE and LICHENOID DERMATOSES guidelines – two of which are large, evidence-based guideline. Updates with additional guidelines are under way. 

The Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project entitled “Harmonized European Dermato-Venereology Undergraduate blended LEARNing Implementation and Training” led by Professors Harald Gollnick, Gunter Burg and Martine Bagot has been successfully completed, achieving an excellent score of 93/100 following submission of the final report. The EDF is looking to build on the progress made by integrating further with Cyberderm and would also encourage EDF members with an interest in undergraduate education, who would to get actively involved in this project.

In order to maintain and promote high quality education and training, the EDF has been working to integrate undergraduate teaching activities with an electronic platform: Cyberderm-DOIT (Dermatology Online with Interactive Technology, www. cyberderm.net) developed by Prof. Gunter Burg and now run by Prof. Alexander Navarini. The educational chapters have been updated, with more than 1000 images, and are now available in German, French, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese, with a Lithuanian version currently being reviewed. There will also be an updated 5th version of the website launched soon.