Marieke Pierik © ECCO

The mission of the Epidemiological Committee of ECCO is optimisation of epidemiological research methods in Europe. During the ECCO Congress in Copenhagen, EpiCom said goodbye to Laurent Beaugerie and Nynne Nyboe-Andersen. We greatly thanked them for all their contributions to EpiCom and welcomed two new members from two different countries: the Netherlands and France.  

Valerie Pittet © ECCO

Marieke Pierik  © ECCO

The FAIR Data Principles propose that scientific outputs should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable [1]. Their aim is to encourage the adoption of good practices with respect to the publication of scientific research data. To this purpose, they provide a list of recommendations regarding documentation of data and datasets that are designed to be helpful for researchers and for computers.

Marieke Pierik © ECCO

The Epidemiological Committee of ECCO (EpiCom) works for the optimisation of epidemiological research in the field of IBD across Europe. Epidemiology focusses on the factors that influence health, the control and long-term outcome of diseases and the measurement of health outcomes. Epidemiology is data driven and to avoid bias and guarantee validity, systematic data collection, meticulous study design and careful selection of the population and method of analysis are crucial.

Naila Arebi © ECCO

Collaborations are the cornerstone of research studies – from inception of the idea to execution of the project, culminating in the final research goal of generating and sharing new knowledge. Information technology has transformed the way we collaborate, opening up new avenues for collaboration through enhanced remote communication between researchers as well as easier collation and sharing of research data across centres.

Naila Arebi © ECCO

An introduction to pharmaco-epidemiology: How to interpret real world data for clinical practice 

The Epidemiological Committee (EpiCom) organised their 4^th workshop at the ECCO’18 Congress in Vienna.  Delegates were welcomed by Ebbe Langholz, who introduced the sessions with a short video on the UR-CARE database to illustrate the importance of databases and their potential across Europe. 

Marieke Pierik  ©  ECCO

The Epidemiological Committee (EpiCom) of ECCO promotes epidemiological research within the field of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) across Europe. Population-based cohort studies on disease course and prognosis are of great interest for IBD epidemiology since in these cohorts a sample or all of the cases in a defined population are selected for longitudinal assessment of exposure–outcome relationships.