W. Brian Gibler, MD, founded the Emergency Medicine Cardiac Research Education Group (EMCREG™) in 1989 to conduct multi-center clinical research trials on serum markers for the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). In 1998, EMCREG became an international collaboration of 18 physician-investigators representing 15 leading institutions throughout the world dedicated to research and education in the field of Emergency Cardiac Care. Since then, EMCREG has evolved into an international research and education network boasting 44 international academic researchers from 31 leading academic research facilities. EMCREG remains centrally coordinated through the University of Cincinnati Department of Emergency Medicine.

The strong reputations of our academic research constituency have helped to make the past year extremely productive in both our educational and research missions. At the end of 2004 EMCREG will have held its 13th educational satellite symposia over the past six years. The success of these events has raised EMCREGs reputation as an educational force to a level wherein our presence at annual scientific meetings has become an expectation of the emergency physician community. A notable change to the group’s focus has been the inclusion of neurovascular emergencies to our focus. With the recent advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions, combined with the University of Cincinnati’s reputation and strength in this field, it was a natural progression – met with enthusiasm by both our constituents and our audiences.

Our educational outreach has been further extended with an increasing number of professional quality educational monographs and hot-topics CME publications. The dramatic increase in emergency cardiovascular and neurovascular research and advancements has opened the door to a floodgate of educational opportunities fueled by a proportional increase in physician interest to keep current. Each educational piece we produce is delivered to the entire constituency of the American College of Emergency Physicians which averages 24,000 emergency physician members. In an effort to broaden our education impact, EMCREG is considering extending its outreach to the European emergency medicine community and the nursing legions of the Emergency Nurses Association.

An important mission of EMCREG has also been promoting the collaboration with other specialties in the arenas of both academic research and clinical practice. EMCREG has developed strong relationships with companion thought-leaders in both cardiology and neurology. These collaboration have involved collaborations on educational symposia, quality assurance initiatives, clinical research endeavors and clinical practice overall. These collaborations have done much to promote the reputation of EMCREG and the field of emergency medicine overall.

Over the coming we year we hope to further strengthen our presence with the development of community-endorsed diagnostic and treatment pathways and clinical algorithms, and to finalize our current efforts to standardize the reporting guidelines for acute coronary syndrome within the field of emergency medicine. We are proud of our accomplishments over a relatively short period of time and have every intention of living up to our core values: Investigate | Educate | Collaborate.