Presenting Japan Digestive Disease Week 2017 (JDDW 2017)

JDDW 2017 will be held over four days from October 12 (Thu.) to 15 (Sun.), 2017, in Fukuoka City (at Fukuoka International Congress Center and other venues). Convening jointly at JDDW 2017 will be the 59th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology (Meeting President Masanori Sugiyama), the 94th Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society (Congress President Toru Itoh), the 21st General Meeting of the Japan Society of Hepatology (Meeting President Eiji Tanaka), the 15th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery (Meeting President Kazuhiro Yoshida), and the 55th General Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastrointestinal Cancer Screening (Meeting President Masashi Oka).

JDDW is a scientific conference bringing together physicians and scientists from a broad spectrum of fields in gastroenterology to present and discuss the latest knowledge and findings in basic and clinical research. For the theme sessions, we ventured to set interesting themes from all areas of gastroenterology, working with the scientific societies to eliminate overlaps while respecting each society’s individuality and characteristics. JDDW will host seven symposiums, nine panel discussions, and 28 workshops. There will also be six sessions in the Integrated Program to discuss themes of common interest to the scientific societies. JDDW’s joint programs include the Seminar on Medical Issues, Women’s Committee of Japanese Gastroenterology Study Group, Medical Ethics Session (“Understanding of the Ethical Guidelines”), and Medical Staff Program.

JDDW is promoting internationalization. In the International Session, invited experts from Japan and abroad will conduct all presentations and discussions on 10 themes in English. In other theme sessions, all presenters have been requested to give their presentations using slides assembled in English. This year will also see the launch of the first joint session between JDDW, Korea Digestive Disease Week (KDDW), and Taiwan Digestive Disease Week (TDDW), featuring celebrated medical scientists as well as young talented scientists in the Rising Star Program.

For this year’s JDDW, the five participating societies laid down joint ethical guidelines so that the conduct of the conference is in compliance with the Ethical Guidelines for Medical and Health Research Involving Human Subjects (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare), which came into force on April 1, 2015. All presenters were required to conform to the ethical guidelines when making their application. Despite our concern that this might have an effect to reduce the number of submissions, we have had many submissions for JDDW as a whole as in previous years. We would like to thank you for your submissions. To streamline JDDW and raise the quality of the presentations, each society carried out a rigorous review to keep the adoption rate at below 85%. In the end, 2,778 were selected for the general poster presentations, and 742 for the theme sessions.

Education is also one of the priority areas of JDDW. The last day of JDDW is dedicated solely to educational lectures. Gastroenterology covers an expansive range of fields and deals with a wide variety of diseases. Diagnosis, treatment, and research are becoming increasingly sophisticated, complex, and, in some areas, subspecialized, so that it is often a challenge to keep updated on the latest knowledge and findings. We hope that JDDW and the Educational Lectures will also serve as opportunities for you to update knowledge on gastroenterology in general.

JDDW 2017 Steering Committee

Chairperson, Masanori Sugiyama

Sponsoring Societies:

59th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology

President: Masanori Sugiyama

94th Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society

President: Toru Itoh

21st General Meeting of the Japan Society of Hepatology

President: Eiji Tanaka

15th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery

President: Kazuhiro Yoshida

55th General Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastrointestinal Cancer Screening

President: Masashi Oka