40 years ago, Doctor Donato Alarcón Segovia shared with us the importance of having our own means, our own contribution to science, our own books and in this way, he invited us to continue to be free, untamed, and proud. A task that we must continue to work on nowadays, especially with the appropriate use of the new technologies.
Latin America is a great region that has over 600 million habitants grouped in over 20 countries. It is necessary to be interconnected, discussing the needs of patients in spaces that allow us to meet and exchange information in order to treat their illnesses or conditions and help them have a better quality of life. We must have our own scientific journals, our own original publications with our own data.
20 years ago, EULAR was barely a dream and a project. Today, it is an organization that serves as an example of leadership and became a great provider of academic and scientific advances.
For many years, PANLAR used to organize their congresses every four years, on the last decade we have been having them every two years. Since 2019, we started with an annual event, which necessarily leads us to compare ourselves with the ACR and EULAR annual congress activities.
This is a transcendent step for PANLAR. Our own annual event where we discuss amongst ourselves in our languages, Spanish, Portuguese, and English, to communicate with the rest of the world. A space where we may contribute and express our concerns and answer questions without having any language barrier.
But PANLAR is much more than this. It is also sharing and enjoying the cultural and fraternal aspects that unite us and will make us feel motivated and excited to attend this annual congress.
Meanwhile, our new dissemination organ, Global Rheumatology, will be in charge of showing our scientific and academic achievements with originality, turning into a source of information that challenges our interests on science, research, and staying current with what is going on in the rheumatology universe.
Journals compile the expression of scientific communities, it is a useful, practical and dignified way of constantly exchanging information regarding what is currently moving the specialty that must be shared with the world. We are aware that there is a great challenge ahead of us, but there is also a great opportunity: the opportunity to develop, grow, and strengthen our desire to have more original trustworthy data to share with better and easier access.
Global Rheumatology may be more than an electronic journal, it is a true platform that provides many opportunities for Latin American rheumatologist colleagues, including other specialists that are working on related areas, both on a basic and clinical level.
In addition to the presentation and discussion of clinical cases, original papers, and review of the literature, it may submerge us into all of the possible perspectives of the specialty, and why not, into the integration of other disciplines such as artificial intelligence, exponential medicine, mathematics, biostatistics, bioelectronics, among others, that also broaden our knowledge barriers and invite us to be more universal and to always be willing to embrace the advances of science along with its various approaches.
Reflecting upon what has happened, at the moment we have our own scenarios, financial resources, national and regional spaces, communication networks, a journal, and a new communication platform that provides us a representation and visibility that is worth taking advantage of. Now we must strengthen our talent and maintain this enthusiasm that characterizes us as Latinos. We need to convince ourselves that what is OURS is valuable, it is a task that we must develop and a commitment to fulfill.
New horizons are opening up for us, filled with opportunities that will require commitment from all of us.
