Dear Fellow members, Friends and Colleagues,

It is a great honour and privilege for me to be elected as your President to serve our beloved Endocrine & Metabolic Society of Singapore (EMSS) over the next 2 years. With effect from the recently held Annual General Meeting on the 12^th April 2018, my new term has commenced.

Importantly, I wish to extend my sincere thanks to the previous ExCo for volunteering their precious time and particularly to Dr. Vivien Lim who served as President of EMSS from 2016-2018 with distinction. Under her leadership, we have initiated a number of changes that will streamline the operations of our society, including making pertinent and necessary alterations to our constitution because a number of clauses have become obsolete since our inception over four decades ago. Dr. Lim has also started an educational series in which eminent endocrinologists and related experts are invited to give talks that cater to the interests of our members. This is a very welcome initiative as these talks not only proved interesting and add to the accrual of our CME points, they provide ample opportunities for fellow members to gather, interact and network. As your new President, I will ensure that we continue this most useful academic and social activity.

We have also finally hired a professional secretarial team to oversee to the smooth operations of the many day-to-day activities, undeniably a first in the history of the EMSS. This is a progressive move that will allow our EMSS ExCo to concentrate on more pertinent issues without being bogged down by issues related to logistics. Our website has also been revamped, thanks to the special effort led by Dr. Yee Szemen and the assistance from our secretariat. Through his expertise, our website is now more dynamic and functional. In case not all our members are aware, online EMSS membership renewal via the website is now possible. We shall be posting on our website events organized or supported by the EMSS regularly to keep our membership updated. Our EMSS official website address is ‘http://emss.org.sg’. We encourage members to visit it and provide any feedback they have to improve it further. For the first time, we have created and established the position of a Past President of the EMSS, and Dr. Vivien Lim will be the very first to assume that post. We believe that this is very helpful because it allows the incumbent President to receive any assistance and mentorship from the Past President whenever required and thus provides better continuity in terms of succession and plans.

Since I am a clinician scientist, I intend to ensure that I also serve the interests of those among us who are enthusiastic in research that will contribute to the science of endocrinology. Together with Dr. Sanjaya Dissanayake, we have improved the research grant application process by making the peer review process more systematic, efficient and transparent. It has been decided that the EMSS will now only have a research grant call on a biennial rather than an annual basis so as to better manage our research funds.

Notably, through the collective effort of Dr. Vivien Lim and all those instrumental to our resounding success, the bid by EMSS to attract the International Congress of Endocrinology (ICE) to Singapore in 2020 became realized. We will now endeavor to work strategically over the next few years to merge AOCE, AFES and the joint Mayo-EMSS endocrine course with ICE. This will evidently be a challenging task but we believe that we will be able to achieve this.

Finally, I wish to welcome our new ExCo office bearers who will work closely with me to fulfill the vision and mission of our society. They are: A/Prof. Khoo Chin Meng (Vice-President), Dr. Vanessa Au (Honorary Secretary), Dr. Zhu Ling (Treasurer) and the following ExCo members -Dr. Chan Soo Ling, Dr. Abel Chen, Dr. Sanjaya Dissanayake, Dr. Andre Tan and Dr. Yew Tong Wei. I appreciate your willingness to serve for the greater good of our society and trust that your tour of duty in the ExCo will be a rewarding one.

Yours faithfully,

A/Prof Melvin Leow Khee Shing

MBBS, MMed(Int Med), PhD, FAMS (Endocrinology), FACE, FACP, FRCP(Edin), FRCPath (Lond) 

President