The 25th Japan Digestive Disease Week (JDDW 2017) will be held for four days from October 12 to 15 in Fukuoka. The Asian Pacific Digestive Week (APDW) 2016 was held semi-concurrently last year, which recorded the largest number of participants exceeding 22,000. In addition to the International Session covering a wide variety of themes as per every year, the new tripartite joint session collaborated with KDDW from Korea and TDDW from Taiwan named “The 1st Joint Session between JDDW & KDDW & TDDW” will be hosted for the first time. The Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery (JSGS) has made an audacious decision to start presenting many of the Symposium sessions in English. Thanks to these efforts, we are assured that the participants will notice that internationalization of JDDW has been fostered. This time, JDDW opened all the sessions for medical staffs at a reduced fee. We are not sure how many medical staff will participate in the conference, but it is our hope that the Medical Staff Program will be richer and helps fertilize new ideas for integral approaches for medical care. We would like as many participants as possible, including nurses, pharmacists, clinical engineers and dietitians, to join the conference, and we would be willing to hear any requests and opinions you may have about the program.
Stricter research ethics screening has been implemented since this year, and it will be necessary to present research based on the legislated rules (Clinical Research Law) from next year. In some circumstances, we noticed clinical research guidelines were not understood well enough among abstract submitters this year; therefore, the Medical Ethics Session will be held where we will show specific issues and countermeasures in order to make the participants understand and support their research and abstract preparation based on the latest legislated Clinical Research Law. Any participants who are considering to present their work at next year’s JDDW will surely find it useful, so we would like to encourage them to attend this session. The syllabus of the Educational Lecture to be held on the final day every year will be distributed for free from this year. The Lecture itself covers cutting-edge topics and attracts many participants annually; thus, it will be our pleasure if you would keep the syllabus as the record at hand and make good use of it.

In fact, it will be the first time since 2011 that the conference will be hosted in Fukuoka. While the city is a little farther away from Eastern Japan, it gets rather closer to our Asian neighbors, such as Korea, China and Taiwan. We are expecting that those participants who came to JDDW and APDW last year will be joining us this year, too. The gold seal, which is Fukuoka City’s national treasure, was discovered here, and huge ruins such as Mizuki Fortress, and Dazaifu Ancient Government Remains, which was the gateway to overseas then, tell us today that the city has had a colorful history. Fukuoka is blessed with delicious seafood freshly brought from the rich coastal waters. We hope many JDDW participants will join the conference to enliven this academic gathering in Fukuoka filled with traditions and passions, and enjoy their time in the city.

Lastly, I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to the congress/meeting presidents; Professor Masanori Sugiyama (The 59th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology), Professor Toru Itoh (The 94th Congress of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society), Professor Eiji Tanaka (The 21st General Meeting of the Japan Society of Hepatology), Professor Kazuhiro Yoshida (The 15th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterological Surgery), which are JDDW’s Official Member Societies, and Professor Masashi Oka (The 55th General Meeting of the Japanese Society of Gastrointestinal Cancer Screening) along with the members of each society’s Program Committee. In particular, Professor Sugiyama made the greatest effort as Chair of the JDDW 2017 Steering Committee as well in planning a lot of creative programs, although the preparation period was about one month shorter than that of last year.

We, the JDDW Directors and the staff of the JDDW secretariat, are committed to having JDDW 2017 go smoothly. We look forward to seeing as many participants as possible at JDDW 2017.

Kentaro Sugano
President, Japan Digestive Disease Week