Dear fellow IEOC Members,
 
I wish to thank International Equine Ophthalmology Consortium for giving me the opportunity to serve such a great organization. I am obviously following in some very large footsteps. I will try to carry on the grand tradition. Hopefully in October, we will see cyclosporine removed as a controlled substance from the FEI list, to the benefit of equine athletes with ocular disease throughout the world.

Since its inception in 2009, the consortium has continued to grow and expand the opportunities it offers through its membership. Further improvements of the website are in the works. One of the main goals this year is to streamline the ability to access the forum. The sign-in requirement, especially when working from a cell phone, can be frustrating and result in fewer responses. We are looking at a way to make this process more seamless. You should be able to simply reply to an email to post a reply to the Forum via your email account. Participation would be much like a list-serve except that you would be signed-in to receive posts only about content of your choice.
 
I think a fundamental and exciting part of this group is the collaboration between members to understand and improve our ability to diagnose and treat horses with eye problems. This collaboration at meetings has already resulted in numerous clinical studies that I have watched unfold over the past years. Improvements to the clinical studies section of the website should result in your ability to see who is collecting data/cases on what problem and instructions for submitting those cases to increase numbers for studies. Your single case means a lot when added to others. I like to think of this as slowly filling up a mug of beer, one drop at a time, everyone is happier when its full.

In addition to the Forum, IOEC now has a Facebook page thanks to Dr. Tim Knott! Updates, questions, and cases can also be posted there. I encourage you to still post cases on both the Forum and Facebook as some our older, maybe less social network savvy individuals, may only respond to Forum posts (please note, I am not naming names here and no horses were injured while I wrote that statement). The Forum benefits us all by making available easily searchable, archived content and photos that could assist us whenever we need them.

The recent meeting in Stresa Italy was a success and continued our history of partnering with the Dorothy Russell Havemeyer Foundation to promote research into equine eye diseases. This partnership will hopefully continue in the future at our next European location.  This was my second trip to Europe for this meeting and it continues to be a very unique experience. Luckily, this time, I did not end up stranded in the middle of the night in a national forest with an unleaded car full of diesel fuel, a Scottish rabbit, and no passport.

Next June sees the symposium return to this side of the pond in Savannah, Georgia. This is a great US location with old time southern charm. The Planning Committee and I would urge all of you attend, and importantly, contribute by presenting your case reports and research at the meeting. The meeting can only be as good as the content we each contribute. As previously stated by Dr. Matthews, the conference presents a unique opportunity to openly discuss the problems and difficulties we all experience doing what we do. “In equine ophthalmology, there are no dogmas. All opinions count, and these opinions together with collective experience contribute to the knowledge base we are striving to build”. Based on the recent survey we sent out, it also looks like we will be choosing a location in Ireland for the 2016 meeting, either Galway or Dublin. Galway would give us a chance to go Connemara pony trekking and they don't require either diesel or unleaded.
 
Looking forward to the next 2 years,
Tammy Miller Michau