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Winter 2022 (Volume 32, Number 4)

Report from the ORA

By Felix Leung, MD, FRCPC, ORA President

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Greetings from the Ontario Rheumatology Association (ORA)! I’m pleased to tell you that the past year has been a very successful one for the ORA! Despite the ongoing pandemic, we have been able to meet our goals as an organization.

I’m proud to say that the ORA executive, board, and committee chairs and members have been working very hard in the face of challenges and unpredictable changes. It doesn’t seem that long ago when we thought we’d never be able to touch grass again. As we are now transitioning to a post-pandemic world, I am happy to see people I have not seen in a long-time, including colleagues at our hybrid Annual Scientific Meeting this past May.

Hybrid ORA Annual Scientific Meeting, in Toronto, May 2022.

Over the past year, we produced virtual town halls to educate our members on several important topics including the treatment of
COVID-19, providing virtual care to rheumatology patients, and accessing medications. We will continue to offer virtual town halls as our members have found them to be extremely valuable.

We have continued to build relationships with the Ontario Ministry of Health and with private payers. We have provided members with information about drug shortages, and we have created a biosimilar fact sheet and a biosimilar position paper, both available on our website ontariorheum.ca.

The Informatics Committee, chaired by Dr. Tom Appleton, has made exciting progress with the ORA Rheumatic Diseases Evaluation Registry (ORDER) to help Ontario rheumatologists improve the care provided to patients. A product launch is imminent! The Northern Ontario Committee chaired by Dr. Sahil Koppikar has made great strides in setting up a structure to enhance rheumatological care in this underserviced area.

The ORA has also created a new dedicated Pediatric Rheumatology Committee co-chaired by Dr. Jennifer Lee and Dr. Piya Lahiry. I’m looking forward to great things from this committee!

I am very excited for the 2023 ORA Annual Scientific Meeting which will be the first fully in-person meeting since 2019. We have a slate of world-class speakers lined up and I know our members are eager to attend. It will be bigger and better than ever! It will be open to all rheumatologists, so please join us May 26-28, 2023, at the Kingbridge Centre just north of Toronto. Please visit and bookmark our website ontariorheum.ca as details will be coming soon.

All these events and initiatives are made possible through the hard work of our ORA leadership team, ORA members, and our Executive Director Sandy Kennedy, to whom I am deeply grateful.

All the best for the coming year,

Felix Leung, MD, FRCPC
President, ORA
Rheumatologist
Toronto, Ontario

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