It is a great honor and pleasure to write this message as the new President of APAGE. It is a difficult and highly responsible job for which Professor KL Goh has served for 4 years with his outstanding leadership. His dedicated efforts transformed the operation of APAGE more transparent and democratic – Each member country can have a council seat to discuss together on the APAGE operation including selection of Executive Committee members, proposal of monothematic meetings, endorsement of loco-regional academic activities, and application to scholarship program. Thus, APAGE is open to every member country whose active participation is crucial to maintain and improve her activity. Fortunately, the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology (JSGE) (Current President: Professor Tooru Shimosegawa) will continue to support APAGE-JSGE monothematic meeting which was successfully organized by Professor Aamir Ghafoor Khan in Islamabad, Pakistan this year with inflammatory bowel diseases as the topic. In turn, the next single topic conference on “Advanced Imaging in Gastroenterology” is planned in Tokyo, April 2016 in conjunction with annual JSGE meeting organized by Professor Mamoru Watanabe. JSGE also continues to provide 4 scholarship awards to young gastroenterologists for a short-term (3 to 4 months) stay in Japanese institutions. We are also very happy that Ms Molly YM Kong and Ms Michele Theng continue to work as our secretariats together with our financial assistant, Ms Venus Yeung in Hong Kong.

 “Advanced Imaging in Gastroenterology”