Winter (Volume 28, Number 4)

Update from the ORA

By Henry Averns, MB, ChB, FRCP (UK), FRCPC

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The Ontario Rheumatology Association (ORA) remains highly active on behalf of its members, representing the interests of rheumatologists and their patients through ongoing meetings with multiple stakeholders. We succeed thanks to the amazing engagement of our members. We continue to work closely with the Ontario Public Drug Program Exceptional Access Program (EAP) and private payers to highlight areas important to our members. We also developed a new biosimilar position statement on the principles we would like to see attached to non-medical switching, if imposed.

This year we also developed a revised governance structure for the Board, and a Code of Conduct for our members. Our manpower committee is planning on merging with our emerging rheumatologists project, and plans include a mentorship program and an event early in 2019 to help young rheumatologists transition into practice, as well as ongoing development of our “RheumCareers” website.

Our Annual Meeting was once again combined with an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) for the trainees, and this is proving to be an annual highlight for the Fellows

The Bill Bensen memorial fund has been accepting applications, and we hope to announce successful recipients of the first award soon.

We have almost completed a process for inviting external IT developers to tender for our Informatics project. By 2019, we believe we will have technology to produce real-world evidence from the data within our electronic medical records (EMRs) to inform our own practices and develop comparative outcome data.

Henry Averns, MB, ChB, FRCP (UK), FRCPC
Consultant Rheumatologist
President,
Ontartio Rheumatology Association
Kingston, Ontario