The 2018 UK-EGG annual meeting was an engaging and informative event, with lectures on a wide range of subjects from a host of talented clinicians, scientists and students. 41 people attended and we received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the sessions, venue (74% of you thought these were “excellent”) and the overall organisation. We received useful suggestions for improvements on other aspects of the day, for example more poster presentations (61% of you thought these were “good”). In order to display more posters we need more abstract submissions so we would urge you to become more involved in the meeting by sending abstracts and unusual or unsolved clinical cases to the scientific committee in good time.

There was a lunchtime session specifically dedicated to genetic counsellors and we will plan specific time in the 2019 programme for topics relevant to this professional group. If you have any suggestions for this or want to be involved please contact Georgina Hall, our treasurer, and Consultant genetic counsellor. Penny Clouston gave a clear overview of the new laboratory configuration and there was very positive feedback for our 2018 Keynote speaker, Professor Robert MacLaren who gave an excellent talk on ‘Gene therapy for Retinal Diseases’. Presentations were recorded with permission from the speakers (thanks to sponsorship from ISGEDR) and these will be available to members only at https://ukegg.com/birmingham-2018. Check your email for the password! Should you wish to propose a future Keynote speaker, or have any suggestion for the 2019 meeting, please let one of the committee members know.

UK-EGG would like to say a huge thank you to Denise Williams and everyone at Birmingham Children’s Hospital for such a fantastic job organising and hosting the meeting, our sponsors, Santhera Pharmaceuticals and Leadiant Biosciences, and to Geoff Cross for providing AV services. And of course thank you to our members and attendees! Finally, we invite interested members to discuss future roles on the UK-EGG committee. We try to maintain a mix of different professionals on the committee (ophthalmologists, clinical geneticists, counsellors, scientists, laboratory staff and patient representatives), however the positions are voluntary and people rotate on/off at staggered intervals, so please contact a committee member if interested.

We look forward to seeing you in Glasgow on Friday November 8th 2019!

Executive Committee (Amanda Churchill, Georgina Hall and Stuart Ingram)