James D. Thomas, FASE

And so it ends as it began, on a plane. When I wrote my first President’s Page, I was on an Air China flight from Beijing to Pusan, South Korea, representing the ASE at the Asia-Pacific Cardiac Doppler Echocardiography meeting. And now, I’m somewhere over the Gulf of Oman, flying from Dubai to Bangkok, on my way to Osaka to represent our Society at the 23 ^rd meeting of the Japanese Society of Echocardiography. If Thai Air cooperates (a big if, since our flight was 90 minutes late out of Dubai and I have only that long to connect in Bangkok), I will meet up with our CEO and COO, Robin Wiegerink and Hilary Lamb, just in time to join the JSE leadership for a wonderful Japanese dinner.

So this is not ave atque vale , “hail and farewell,” the phrase the Romans uttered over their graves, but rather ave atque ave , hail and hail just a little bit more, for I am not going away, and “hail” is just what the ASE deserves this year. It’s been quite a year on so many fronts. First there’s the simple arithmetic of our membership. In 2011-2012, ASE reached more members than ever before, a record 15,661 in March, which is 6% more than just a year ago! Every time we go before the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) or any other payor to advocate for appropriate reimbursement for cardiovascular ultrasound, it is our membership numbers that speak the loudest. We are grateful to every single member of ASE for giving us the power to work for you. We are especially grateful for our 2,266 new members who have joined the ASE family in the eight months, a nearly 50% increase over the same time period for each of the past two years.

Remarkably, some of our greatest membership gains have been outside the US, where our rolls have swelled to 2,813, the largest international reach of any echo society in the world. This growth is due, in no small part, to the whirlwind of activity that ASE has had in the world of echo. We started last July with the First World Summit of Echo Societies, a rousing success in Buenos Aires for the over 1,200 attendees (with plans well underway for the second summit in New Delhi in October 2013). This was followed by ASE representation at the Great Wall meeting in Beijing, where we honored the many Chinese doctors translating our guidelines into Mandarin (you can see all our translations at www.asecho.org/translations ), and EuroEcho, where we hosted our first international ASE member event in the historic city of Budapest. Of course the crowning event of the year was the massive medical camp in Sirsa, India, where we scanned over 1,000 patients (a Guinness World Record), with readings done remotely all over the world. Incredible!

We’ve also had a great year in the education arena. You all know the jewels in our crown: the Board Review Course, Echo Hawaii and State-of-the-Art, to be joined this October by Echo Florida. But beyond these, ASE was involved in over 100 other educational events last year (Webcasts, co-sponsorships, local society events, sonographer hospital events, etc.), reaching an incredible 18,000 people! Now we are all gearing up for the biggest event of the year, our Scientific Sessions, being held June 30 to July 3 at the Gaylord National Harbor, just outside our nation’s capitol. This promises to deliver incredible echo (and multimodality) education, along with a whole lot of fun. I hope you will ALL join us there!

This also was the year that Connect@ASE really came into its own. We’ve seen a five-fold growth in traffic at the site, allowing all of our community to post questions, form discussion groups, and just make new friends. It’s also given me a forum for my President’s Blog, where I’ve been able to bring you along on a few of my trips. You’ve seen that one of my passions is for adventurous, exotic cuisine, and it’s been my honor to serve as your goodwill ambassador and roving food critic (hmmm…maybe they’ll have some sea urchin tomorrow night!) I hope you will all take part in the Connect community. It’s a wonderful way to get to know each other.

So much more has happened this year: four new guidelines published and ten others underway; our successful annual appeal for the ASE Foundation, which has enabled us to expand our research awards and student scholarships and disseminate our guidelines and posters around the world (we’ll be kicking off this year’s annual appeal at the Scientific Sessions); the intense strain standardization efforts between ASE, European Association of Echocardiography, and our industry partners; a new strategic plan to guide ASE in the coming years.

You may have noticed that I’ve been a bit stingy with personal thanks, and there’s a reason for that. Even if I filled my entire 1,000 word allotment with names, it still wouldn’t be enough to include everyone who contributed to making this year a success, but I will give some broad categories. To Robin and all the staff at ASE, thank you for providing the hard work and leverage that turns our ruminations into action. To my fellow executive board members and past presidents, thanks for your well-reasoned counsel on so many topics. To the board, committee and council chairs and members, thank you for the countless hours you put in doing the real work of the Society. To our international partners, you’ve shown me that the world really is a small place and that much can be accomplished through cooperation and friendship. To our commercial partners, thank you for your commitment to ASE and the support you give throughout the year. And to our members, all 15,000+ of you, thank you for giving the Society the means and spirit to exist. I hope more of you will become active in ASE as we take on even more projects in the future. And finally, my deepest thanks to my wonderful wife, Yngvil, and our children, Beth, Daniel, Katarina, and Linn. They knew this year would be a crazy one with lots of distractions, and they have given me their full support (of course, getting to go to Echo Hawaii took a bit of the sting out of it!) I know Yngvil has really enjoyed being the “First Lady of ASE” this year.

I step aside knowing that ASE is in strong, committed hands as we go into the future, with Patty Pellikka, Ben Byrd, and Neil Weissman following me. ASE is truly a wonderful organization, and it has been my honor and pleasure to have served as your president this year. Thank you all.

PS: Yes, Thai Air did cooperate (barely), so on a dead run I made my connection to Osaka and renewed our fellowship with the Japanese echo community. You can read all about it in my blog!