I have been honoured to work, discuss, and share ideas with individuals who are among the best robotic surgeons in Europe. Thanks to collaboration with overseas and international friends we, as a Society, have been able to accomplish a lot, both in defining the role of robotic surgery for the treatment of patients with benign or malignant gynaecological disease and in implementing the important concepts of robotic surgery training and curriculum.

I am happy to say that most of the past and present SERGS council members are not only my respected colleagues but, first of all, friends with whom we have shared very nice moments.

Becoming president in the footsteps of such giants in the field of robotic surgery is humbling.  I learned a lot from their leadership and I hope to be able to fulfil their legacy to make SERGS bigger and stronger.

While we organize the next yearly SERGS meeting, we are working on new courses in collaboration with other scientific societies, structured webinars, and educational videos (in the SERGS Video Portal) that are available to all members of our society. We have signed MOUs with ESGE and ESGO, we are finalizing the SERGS curriculum, we are a recipient of part of GESEA4EU: EU CONTRIBUTION (grant), and last but not the least we just published “The Console”, SERGS’s new biannual newsletter for members.

Moreover, I want to thank Thomas Ind, our past President, who led the Society for the previous two years with energy, enthusiasm, and wisdom and left us an amazing legacy, the result of great inspiration and many hours of hard work: the “Training the Trainers in Gynaecological Robotic Surgery: e-Learning Course”.

In order to define a plan for the Society’s future activities, we need first of all to acknowledge where we (as SERGs) are and then look into the future, being aware of the difficult challenges we may have to face. Therefore, we need to work together to identify the new goals for the Society. This will be the most important task of my presidency, with the help of an incredible group: Thomas Ind (Past President), Henrik Falconer (President Elect), Thomas Herbert (Secretary / Treasurer), Martin Heubner (Vice-President), along with all our amazing SERGS council members.

I hope I have given you more than one reason to join our Society so that we can learn together how to implement and enjoy this new technology that brings about further surgical progress for the best of our patients.

For the Society of European Robotic Gynaecological Surgery

Vanna Zanagnolo

SERGS President