Well, hello, everybody. First of all, thank you all for coming today on this beautiful Chicago day, which I don't know, might be warm to some of you. My name is Jen Seminario. I'm coming to you from Tampa, Florida, as you can see. So I'm really, really excited to do this through ASGE and the ARIA Committee. This is a really exciting opportunity for us as gastroenterologists to be able to talk to you all, who are our amazing industry representatives, about what it's like to be a GI doctor, give you guys some insight. And our goals are really just to sort of bridge that gap that exists between our two fields. And I think that those of us that are on this committee have a very special relationship with different individuals in industry. I think that you guys serve so many purposes with regards to getting messages out to the community, both healthcare providers as well as patients. You help advocate for us. You help bring new ideas to our field. You help teach us. And so today is our opportunity to give back a little and give you guys some insight into some of the stuff that you may not know that we do on an everyday basis. And I have an amazing faculty that's here with me today. As you can see, we have some nice representation from Chicago. Dr. Abugandi from Loyola, Dr. Bukobo from Manhasset, New York, Dr. Chapman from Rush, Dr. Mishra from Stroger here in Chicago, Dr. Robinson from Rush, and Dr. Singh from Rush. And so throughout the course today, we want you guys to see who is all being represented. We've got lots of different participants that are here with us, some that are near to each of our hearts because of our specialties and fields, but some that we are really excited to get to know. And I think that that's what's special is that in GI, honestly, most of us have some sort of interaction with every single one of you, maybe in smaller percentages. But overall, you play a role for all of us. So a little bit about what's going to go on today. What we want to do and what we really want to be able to convey to all of you is a little bit of understanding about the GI tract in general, which we think will help broaden your knowledge and ability to engage both in the community and, again, with patients in regards to what's healthy, what do we consider to be the norm, what are the most commonly encountered GI diseases that we face, and obviously, in participation with ASGE, the endoscopic findings that become really prominent and really catch our eye and hopefully be able to share those with you. I think the next stage of that is how do we improve our communication? We think that one of those ways is by having up-to-date GI knowledge presented to everybody. When I was at breakfast just now, we were just talking about how there's different ways to educate. You educate patients a specific way. You educate other healthcare professionals in a specific way, and educating the participants here today through our industry connections is also vital to the way that we're going to promote our field in the future. I think understanding ways that you can help us, right, because we're not that altruistic, is going to be really important as well, and engaging with you is one of those ways. Then from your guys' perspective, what we hope to do is get you guys to earn your ARIA Certificate of Completion, which is the ARIA seal that you'll get through the ASGE, and then open up ideas for ongoing educational opportunities. The agenda today, as you can see here, we're going to begin in just a few minutes with a day-in-the-life discussion. There's going to be lectures and questions. We encourage all of you to ask whatever it is that's on your mind. We're open books for you today. We'll take a small break after that, and then we'll get into lectures. With each of the lectures, again, please ask questions as they come to you. I'll talk a little bit about the way to ask questions. We'll do a group photo after that, and then sit down for lunch. At lunch, I hope that you guys come and find us. Come and find me and ask me questions, and I'm more than happy to connect. We'll then move on to the BioSkills Lab, where you guys will get an opportunity to become endoscopists in and of yourself. Each of us will be in a session, and during that portion, we'll teach you a little bit about how to hold the scope, and then some of the different techniques that we use when we're scoping from polypectomy to doing biopsies, and then a little bit into some of the more advanced techniques that we use. Then we'll take another break, and then we'll end with another case discussion and panel session where you guys will be able to ask any additional questions that may come up throughout the day. Obviously, for anybody here, there is free Wi-Fi. You just select the ASG network. You do not have to put in a password and accept the terms of use. The microphones. All of this is being recorded today, and we want to be able to hear your questions because it doesn't help us if we are listening back to our own answers, but we don't know exactly what the question was. You can see on your little triangle microphones out there, you just push. You press the push button, and then it'll light up green, and after that, then you can ask the question. I tell you that because I was just at another conference recently with actual GI doctors, and we couldn't figure it out. I assume that you guys are all much smarter than we are on this ability to get that button pushed so that that way we can be able to use this for future educational opportunities, and then when you're done, you deactivate the button, and I think that now in the COVID era with all of our adventures in Zoom and Teams that we understand that sometimes we do forget to repush that mute button, and then we all get to hear what's going on at our houses. When we get to the Bioskills Lab later today, you're going to enter the lab. You go through the main restrooms, and you can store any belongings that you may have in one of the lockers. You're not allowed to bring in any food or drink into the Bioskills Lab, and then once you get into that lab, you're going to put on your gown over your clothes, and then you'll have a station number indicated on the front of your badge today, and so this is just a little bit of a map as towards how we get to that Bioskills Lab later on today. Everything that we're doing today is going to be available for you guys to go back and look at. It's going to be available on GI Leap, and so if you do have any questions or you need assistance, I encourage you to email Michelle Thomas through the ASGE. Michelle has been absolutely incredible, and what she does for the ASGE through organizing some of these programs and being a partner for so many of us goes without saying, and so before we move forward, I think we should all just clap our hands for Michelle and everything she's done today. Again, all these lectures are available for you on there, so please reach out and get that, and then, oh, let's get to the good stuff. I know you all really enjoyed that pretest. In fact, I heard from some of you how much you enjoyed it, and so we knew you enjoyed it so much that we wanted you to do it again, so now you get to do a post-assessment, and it is due by April 5th. We would like you to get a passing score of 80%, so hopefully that's on us to make it so that when you take that post-test, those questions are going to become really easy and that you'll just know exactly what it is, and then after that, you feel free to reopen applications for medical school and then move forward into a residency and fellowship, so that's really how we plan to make things go by the end of today. There is an online evaluation at the end of today, so this is helpful for everybody. I know that sometimes evaluations are burdensome, but we can't learn how to do this better if you guys don't tell us what you need, what we're missing, what we could have done better, or more importantly, to some extent, what we did well, and I think that that's ultimately going to be really helpful as we move forward with this in the future. Again, that's going to be on ASGE GI LEAP for you guys to do at the end of the course today. So, without further ado, we're going to go ahead and get started.

gastroenterologists

industry representatives

GI tract health

endoscopic findings

communication