The collaborative interaction between the ECTS and the International Federation of Musculoskeletal Research Societies (IFMRS) has grown significantly in recent years and several ECTS-representatives are also involved in IFMRS working groups, active as board or council members.
The IFMRS serves as umbrella organization for musculoskeletal research societies fostering their collaboration, enabling a greater knowledge exchange, and influencing policy makers in order to raise awareness and improve the prevention and treatment of musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions worldwide. Thereby, the IFMRS activities span a great diversity i.e. growing the musculoskeletal knowledge portal for the exchange of omic results relevant to MSK traits and diseases, organizing the yearly clinical round table discussions with online participation of clinician experts seeking to determine unmet needs world-wide and looking for solutions how to address them, creating an IFMRS mentoring network identified as key means to improving access to knowledge and research capacity globally, and many more. To raise global awareness for MSK the IFMRS is in contact with several WHO groups and contributes to activities addressing healthy aging, improving risk assessment for fracture and investigating how to strengthen MSK using artificial intelligence for diagnosis and therapy.
In our collaboration with the IFMRS, the ECTS-IFMRS working group aims to co-organize scientific sessions at the annual ECTS congress that serves the interest of both organizations. In the upcoming 2025 ECTS meeting, the co-organized session on Digital Twins (Sunday 14.15h) aims to provide new insights into how this innovative digital technology could benefit MSK health through identifying novel therapeutic targets and enabling innovative personalized treatment strategies. With two invited experts of the field presenting their knowledge on biomechanical and multi-omics modeling, we are hoping for a lively interdisciplinary exchange and great scientific discussions.
In addition, our working group believes in the added advantages that local smaller scale meetings offer, i.e. a more intimate and networking-rich experience. The Herbert Fleisch Workshop is a popular workshop to connect early- and mid-career researchers in the musculoskeletal field with an experienced faculty team in a spirit of collegiality and friendship, promoting the exchange of research ideas, educating next generation scientists and allowing for informal mentoring sessions. In the past couple of months, the ECTS-IFMRS working group started planning the organization of a Herbert Fleisch workshop to be held in Europe and co-organized by the ECTS and IFMRS – hopefully we can announce the final plans in the near future.
We hope that our collaborative efforts will contribute to the shared ECTS and IFMRS mission of advancing musculoskeletal research globally, for the benefit of patients suffering from MSK disorders.