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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