Final President's Message- State of the ASE

The state of the ASE is exceptionally strong. Over the past year, our Society has strengthened operations by updating governance, improving standing committee interactions, and refining our work groups, task forces, and forums. At ASE's annual February Board Retreat in Scottsdale, Arizona, we revised the 2020 strategic goals to ensure their ongoing relevance during a time of unprecedented change. We have honed our experience with digital learning and launched conversations and action plans around the current healthcare worker shortage, which has profoundly affected sonographers. Through resilience, ASE has been a port in the storm for members and a source for innovative ideas to manage and shape a changing landscape. Signs that we remain highly relevant are our strong finances and a growing (both U.S. and international) and more diverse membership. Our Specialty Interest Groups (SIGs) and Councils have grown. With growth and complexity comes the risk for overreach and reduced efficiency. I am confident that we are continuing to streamline operations, decrease redundancy, and increase communications across the component parts of ASE's multifaceted ecosystem. Enjoying our lives: I often hear how much personal enjoyment our members derive from volunteering for ASE. Volunteer members find an extended and welcoming family within ASE, not just colleagues; and I am happy to see this ASE tradition endures as we recognize the ASE's founders and luminaries while fostering our early career members. During the past year, I have used the monthly President's Page as a platform for updating ASE members on various current Societal new items. Where are we changing or growing right now? In this final message, I will continue this practice by listing several of ASE's recent accomplishments with shout outs to some who help make things happen — regretting inevitable omissions! Some of these bulleted items are completed; others are either works in progress with defined endpoints or have the potential to become enduring features of ASE.•AI Forum: Echo Lab Workflow of the Future, New York City, March 25, 2022. This spectacular one-day event drew together luminary speakers, industry partners, and ASE leaders to focus upon ways in which the various aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) will affect our field. Special thanks go to Dr. Ted Abraham for his stellar work putting together the event including luminary speakers, I. Glenn Cohen, JD (Harvard Law School), Dr. Daniel Kraft (physician visionary), and Michael D. Abramoff, MD, PhD (Digital Diagnostics). Additional panels of AI forum ASE leaders, including Judy Hung, Stephen Little, Keith Collins, Vera Rigolin, Koko Parks, Steve Lester, Susan Mayer, Rima Arnaout, and Patty Pellikka conveyed important messages on behalf of clinicians and researchers. Some take home vocabulary words: digital natives, big data, healthcare vs sickcare, ambient intelligence, wearables, digital exhaust, appifiaction, gameify, homespital, digital health, digital twin. The event was such a success that we are planning a follow-up AI forum in the spring of 2023 so that ASE remains a key participant in this quickly changing arena. Congratulations to Meredith Morovati along with Dana Hanson and Kelly Joy for expert staff organization and support.•Industry Round Table (IRT): Drs. Patty Pellikka and Burkhard Mackensen, Chair and Co-chair of the Industry Relations Committee, pushed our IRT program to new highs with 14 members — incorporating pharma, device, AI, and other vendors into our fold and managing two IRT retreats during my presidency. The latest March IRT weekend think tank meeting in New York City immediately followed the AI Forum, mentioned above. This brilliant programing proved to be a fertile ground for discussion and collaborations to come. I want to thank Dr. Pellikka for her enormous dedication and welcome Dr. Mackensen as the new Industry Relations Committee Chair.•Critical Care Echocardiography (CCE) Steering Committee Retreat, Georgetown, Washington, D.C. This first and pivotal face-to-face meeting between ASE leadership and the CCE Specialty Interest Group (SIG) leaders recently took place on March 31, 2022. This planning meeting will ensure a smooth SIG-to-Council transition with a go-live date of 7/1/2022. Critical Care Echocardiography will be the first new ASE Council in over 14 years — since development of the longstanding four ASE Councils: Sonography, Pediatric, Vascular, and Perioperative. Council status provides representation on the ASE Board, monthly publication opportunities in Echo magazine, guaranteed positions on key ASE standing committees, and other privileges. Special thanks go to the CCE SIG co-chairs, Drs. Art Labovitz and Jim Kirkpatrick, for their leadership in building bridges. This council is remarkably multidisciplinary, including leadership by Dr. Jose Diaz-Gomez (Anesthesia CC), Drs. Paul Mayo and Seth Koenig (Pulmonary CC), Dr. Nova Panebianco (Emergency Medicine) along with cardiology-based members Merri Bremer, Vince Sorrell, Sharon Mulvagh, Edwin Tucay, and many others.•Interventional Echo SIG. Next up for a SIG-to-Council transition (for a new total of six ASE Councils) is Interventional Echo. Groundwork is already in place for this transition to occur in January of 2023. Therefore, ASE will have two new Councils in place (critical care echocardiography and interventional echo), in time for the 2023 ASE Scientific Sessions. Also happening in this space is development of an Interventional Echo Training Document with aspirations for eventually achieving specialty designation for this area of practice. Space does not allow for me to thank at this time all of the many individuals who have been coordinating this effort, although their accomplishments will be highlighted many times in the coming months to be sure.•Veterinary Specialty Interest Group (aka Vet SIG). Veterinary ASE members' collaborative efforts were rewarded with SIG designation after Board approval of their application in December 2021. Vet SIG joins the other existing ASE SIGs: Cardio-Oncology, Emerging Echo Enthusiasts (E3) and Neonatal Hemodynamics TnECHO. The Vet SIG steering committee chairs are Drs. Etienne Côté and Philippe Pibarot, both Canadian ASE members. Dr. Côté noted that their group's SIG designation is a “truly rewarding step forward for human-veterinary collaboration in echocardiography.” Through the Vet SIG we learned of many veterinary cardiovascular organizations around the world, including the Veterinary Cardiovascular Society of Thailand with 300 members.•ASE Forums — a Growing Platform. Dr. Ritu Thamman has led ASE's successful “Women in Echo Forum” for two years. Thank you, Ritu! Dr. Judy Hung, ASE Past-President, launched the “Echo Lab Medical & Technical Directors Leadership Forum” this past February to great effect. What makes a forum distinct from other ASE gatherings? ASE Forums are available to members and non-members alike. The online virtual format allows easy access through a link on the ASE's website (see “initiatives” www.asecho.org/ase-forums/). Forums uniquely enable a direct line of communication between all in the cardiovascular community–ASE member or not–and ASE leadership, and this exchange is enormously valuable. Are we addressing the cardiovascular community's actual needs and how do we push out information about the ASE? Forums help. We anticipate the organization of an additional AI forum in the future.•Publications Committee. ASE's three major publications have flourished. 1) JASE begins a new phase with Dr. Patricia Pellikka named incoming JASE Editor-in-Chief in 2022. This follows what will be an incredibly successful five-year Michael Picard, MD, JASE Editor-in-Chief legacy. Drs. Picard and Pellikka will be working together in transition beginning in July. 2) CASE, led by Editor-in-Chief Dr. Vince Sorrell, began monthly publication last month. 3) Echo magazine also began monthly publication in 2022 (from a yearly publication) under the guidance of Co-Editors, Drs. Meryl Cohen and Ben Eidem. A publications committee will allow editors to more easily develop thematic and coordinated publications if desired, to better communicate with the ASE leadership; and to pool resources for evaluating and potentially implementing some of the rapid changes now occurring in the media and publication space.•Education: Through Dr. Carol Mitchell's vision and Christina LaFuria's hard work, the ASE rolled out a new Sonographer Curriculum subscription to accredited Sonography schools last August, enabling new learners' early access to the very latest in ASE's vast educational offerings. The response has been excellent. In a similar vein, Dr. Mitchell and I are working with a new Physician Curriculum platform, which is being developed by Chair and Co-chair Drs. Peter Rahko and Jayashri Aragam. This project shows enormous potential as we pilot “new learner” material.•Leadership Academy (LA). I met the LA's second cohort in person for their first and only in-person gathering (due to the pandemic) at their Capstone Project proposal presentations in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2022. Their projects were devoted to ASE member “Wellness” and creating more “Impactful Guidelines.” Our future is bright as these already experienced early career ASE leaders demonstrate that we are all happily forever students. Congratulations to Dr. Neil Weissman for his LA vision and ongoing mentorship. And, thanks to ASE Past Presidents Drs. Vera Rigolin and Madhav Swaminathan who will head up a new Leadership Academy Committee, a sign that the LA itself has graduated from Task Force status.•Research Coordination Project. Research initiatives within ASE have grown in number and type over the last few years. Congratulations to Dr. Sam Siu, Chair of the ASE's Research Committee, for heading up both a large stakeholder group and a smaller working group (Marielle Scherrer-Crosbie, Jordan Strom, Vandana Sachdev, Jeff Hill, and Sarah Beth Bdoyan), as we develop a flexible, workable structure for managing and promoting ASE's research. We expect a July 1st go-live date for this important endeavor.•Landmark News: National Heart Institute (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) – ASE Partnership. Many thanks to Dr. Vandana Sachdev, ASE Board Member, and director of the NIH Echo Lab, for opening a dialogue between ASE leadership and the Foundation for the National Institute of Health (FNIH) to participate in their new and ambitious five-year Accelerating Medicines Partnership® for Heart Failure (AMP® HF) project (https://fnih.org/our-programs/amp/about). This project will tackle the enormous problem of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) by evaluating diverse clinical phenotypes of HFpEF; performing deep phenotyping with imaging, genetic, other tissue and novel biomarkers; applying advanced analytics, including image repository development, network analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, to determine HFpEF phenotypes clusters that may be amenable to certain therapeutic interventions. Echo will play a large role in all stages of the project's development and results. In April, the ASE Board approved a five-year letter of agreement with the FNIH for a seat on the AMP® HF Steering Committee. This position, while a significant financial commitment, will be invaluable for the project success, for helping the ASE develop best practices for internal research efforts and to secure our status as the lead organization for cardiovascular ultrasound. ASE Past-President, Dr. Judy Hung, will represent ASE in this steering committee position at the 2022 launch. Thank you, Judy, and the ASE Board.•ASE Scientific Sessions 2022. I am very excited about the upcoming 33rd annual ASE Scientific Sessions (June 10-13) – Sound Waves in Seattle: Connecting the World with a hybrid format. We expect a large in-person attendance, and this event will continue to be available around the world, virtually. The content is amazing! The ASE Foundation Gala theme honors our great history of ASE Luminaries. Dr. Harvey Feigenbaum will personally deliver the Feigenbaum Lecture during the Sessions, and he will be honored with a named Harvey Feigenbaum Founder's Table at the ASEF Awards Gala Dinner, where Dr. Liv Hatle will be also honored with the named Liv Hatle International Table. We are indebted to the Scientific Sessions Planning Committee Chair, Dr. Sharon Mulvagh, and Co-Chair, Dr. Carol Mitchell, for their enormous dedication along with the large numbers of volunteers and Staff members who worked diligently all year. It has been an honor to experience in detail, the dynamic ASE ecosystem, comprised of some 16,000 members and more than 1,400 volunteers serving in over 25 standing committees, several work groups, task forces, and now forums. Each ASE member develops a unique window on where ASE is heading. One's personal ASE mental construct is built over time from many different unique engagement experiences. This is powerful. How does one's mental construct remain accurate and current? The ASE President, and its CEO, must consider how all of the many ASE components are performing right now and strive for coordination, efficiency, and communications throughout the entire Society at all times. I hope that I have been able to message current events on a regular basis through this column and at other times. In closing, I want to extend a special thanks to Robin Wiegerink, ASE CEO, for her incredible diligence and ability. She and her entire team of our wonderful Staff makes the ASE President's position both possible and a great honor. A very special thank you to Deborah Meyer for her expert assistance in all things publication-related. And, finally, I thank the entire ASE Board of Directors and in particular the Executive Committee members: Judy Hung, Steve Little, Ben Eidem, Meryl Cohen, Cynthia Taub, and Matt Umland — I treasure your wisdom and friendship and the many hours we deliberated on innumerable subjects. Soon, I will pass the ASE President's baton to Dr. Steve Little, and I know he and the ASE will flourish thereafter.Raymond Stainback, MD, FASE, is Chief of Non-invasive Cardiology at the Texas Heart Institute at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, Texas and associate professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He has been an ASE member since 1994 and is ASE’s current President. This text also appears in the June Echo magazine (http://ASEcho.org/EchoMagazine/).