Takanori Ikeda
Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Toho University Faculty of Medicine

Katsushige Ono
Oita Shimogori Hospital/ Oita University

The 69th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Heart Rhythm Society (JHRS2023) will be held in the north of Japan, at the Sapporo Convention Center in Sapporo, Hokkaido, from Thursday, July 6th to Sunday, July 9th, 2023. We will hold this meeting as a completely onsite meeting. The last time JHRS held its annual meeting in Hokkaido was seven years ago, in 2016. We, Takanori Ikeda of Toho University and Katsushige Ono of Oita University, will preside over this annual meeting.

The theme of this annual meeting is “the Fusion of Arrhythmology and Electrocardiology.” It has been passed eight years since the present Japanese Heart Rhythm Society was founded through the 2015 merger of the Japanese Society of Electrocardiology with the former Japanese Heart Rhythm Society. As the congress presidents, we both aspire to further advances through the integration of arrhythmology and electrocardiography, and that aspiration is reflected in the theme of our meeting. Lavender blossoms are depicted on the poster of JHRS2023. Many people will associate lavender with Furano, but lavender cultivation in Hokkaido actually began in Sapporo and was then relocated. We chose this picture with the desire to return to the original intentions of the merger as the place where we began, while pursuing further evolution.

At JHRS2023, we plan to incorporate the work of medical professionals who provide education in a number of fields, in addition to clinical research and basic medical research. The clinical areas to be covered at this meeting will include arrhythmia diagnosis and risk assessment, drug therapy, and the non-drug therapies of catheter ablation and device therapies such as implantable defibrillators and ventricular resynchronization. The areas of basic medical research will include ionic channels, genetic research, regenerative medicine, and simulation of electrical activity. As indicated in the theme of JHRS2023, we plan to integrate the topics in these fields as fully as possible, while further elevating the research and providing the latest findings. JHRS2023 will also deal with topics related to artificial intelligence (AI), a focus of much attention in recent years. In previous annual meetings, “Ablation Summit” and “Device Summit” was allocated as the major sessions. In JHRS2023 we will include “Electrocardiology Summit” as well. We are also planning a joint symposium with other Japanese academic societies, as well as international sessions that will involve International Congress on Electrocardiography (ICE) 2023 as satellite events. We intend to call for papers both in Japan and internationally.

Our hope is that JHRS2023 will be a fruitful, meaningful, and memorable annual meeting. In addition to members of the Japanese Heart Rhythm Society, we hope that not only domestic but also foreign many participants will attend as well. We look forward to seeing you in Sapporo.