ASEAN Journal of Anaesthesiology: the dawn of a new era

The practice of anaesthesiology in ASEAN has seen and overcome many challenges throughout the years. Indeed, the esprit de corps of the Confederation of the ASEAN Societies of Anaesthesiology (CASA), formed by the common purpose of advancing the art and science of anaesthesiology in ASEAN, has been unquestionable. The existence of the ASEAN Journal of Anaesthesiology (AJA) is the embodiment of CASA’s commitment to education, scholarship and research. The unanimous support rendered by the presidents of the constituent societies at the most recent CASA meeting in Kota Kinabalu in 2009 for the continuity of AJA is again, testament to the belief that AJA could play a role in harmonizing knowledge and the practice of anaesthesiology in this region.

The maintenance of free access to AJA would be imperative in our quest to optimally reach out to as many readers (and contributors) as possible; this has been the stand adopted by the confederation. Additionally, AJA has been given the mandate to take an extra step to leverage on opportunities offered by the current information technology to be ‘paperless’ and ‘green’ for authors and readers alike. The ‘new’ AJA will be entirely web-based for a start; with the currency of information being the principal priority. Issues that often plagued and sometimes paralyzed readers’ access to the ‘old’ AJA, such as the escalating cost of printing, the delays of shipping and the timeliness of dissemination would hopefully be a memory of the past.

One of the missions of the ‘new’ AJA clearly resides in its potential capacity to disseminate knowledge to all, i.e educating anaesthesiologists in ASEAN and beyond. To this end, the decision has been taken for AJA to focus on practical issues with a strong clinical relevance such as the problem of a difficult airway in anaesthesia, which incidentally is the theme of our next issue. These articles and reviews will certainly be in the realms of the latest in the ‘best practices’, contributed by some of the very best in the field. Do look put for this space.

Apart from education, AJA is committed to publishing original research articles that generate ‘new’ knowledge. Research is a necessary arm in the virtuous cycle of knowledge creation, dissemination, application and further hypothesis generation; this can never be overemphasized. To this end, contributions and free papers from authors on all aspects of anaesthesiology (and related fields) are welcome as we uphold the process of peer review in the eventual publication of all articles in AJA.  We hope you will enjoy the new era of AJA; we look forward to your contributions and interactions in cyberspace henceforth.

Alex TH Sia

Editor in Chief

ASEAN Journal of Anaesthesiology