1. Research
   Professor Price reported that the IPCRG has been encouraged by the European Union to resubmit a bid for a large multi-centre international research project, SPACE. Its aim is to improve the care of children with asthma who do not receive adequate reviews by providing advice and standards to individual health care systems.

2. Annual Meeting
   Members identified these core benefits of membership:
   Inspiration: to develop their own regional conferences eg Nordic conference; to conduct multinational research; from the PCRJ
   Networking: providing a virtual and real arena to meet; to share research ideas; email newsletter, and email list
   Critical mass: to challenge secondary care thinking and practice; to provide a knowledge base; to offer feedback/sounding board
   Influence: to influence guidelines (ideally based on primary care research); to advocate on behalf of primary care to governments eg UAE, Pakistan
   Partnerships: Asia Asthma Development Board; EFA; ERS primary care group; to support researchers eg in Pakistan clinical research is not accredited by universities; NRTC education

3. Access to Journals
   The IPCRG Executive decided that for financial reasons the IPCRG will not purchase and distribute copies of the Primary Care Respiratory Journal (PCRJ) to members in 2006. Instead, the Executive has appointed a working party to explore all options for member access to academic journals including open access online and to report to the Executive by this December. It has also given support to the formation of an Education Committee to oversee production of a range of educational resources.

4. Website
   The IPCRG website has undergone significant development in the last 12 months. Highlights include:
   Research section: The research section now includes a dynamic research needs statement, information on how to submit research proposals together with a searchable research register that needs to be populated by you with current research, and links to relevant publications
   Links section: The links section of the website can now be ordered by country or disease area allowing easier surfing.
   The latest statistics show that the number of monthly hits has reached over 16,000 and the monthly visits has surged from 1200 in May 2004 to 6700 in May 2005.
   We will also shortly be including a guide on the website for individuals wishing to set up a new primary care respiratory group.

5. Education
   In June we participated in the World Conference Leadership Summit in Las Vegas http://www.worldcongress.com/wcls/respiratory/index.cfm. We have co-badged four respiratory meetings: the Asthma and Allergic Rhinitis MetaForum with the University of Southampton; the Edinburgh meeting on COPD and the Aberdeen meeting on COPD and asthma with the University of Aberdeen which was run again very successfully in September in Lebanon.

6. Membership
   Ee are pleased to confirm that the National Respiratory Training Centre accepted our invitation to join as an associate member. We now have 15 full voting member countries, and 19 associate member countries. For details see http://www.theipcrg.org/members/index.php

7. Conference
   We are proud of the programme and arrangements for what we hope will be our very best conference yet in Oslo, Norway from 8-11 June 2006. The theme of the conference Respiratory Diseases in Primary Care: Quality of Care will reflect everyday problems experienced around the world in managing respiratory disorders in primary care and will offer tools and advice to help set the highest standards and assist practitioners to manage these issues.
   The closing date for submission of abstracts is 15 December 2005. For more information on abstract submission go to http://www.theipcrg.org/oslo2006/about/abstracts.php
   To register for the conference simply go to http://www.theipcrg.org/oslo2006/about/registration.php and complete the application form and submit with your payment details.
   We hope to have sufficient budget in 2006 to subsidise travel for some members in developing countries.

8. Priorities for IPCRG 2006
   Priorities for 2006 were agreed at the Annual meeting of the IPCRG:
   Supporting developing countries
   
   • Recognise differences in delivery of care through exchanging real life examples
   • Help developing countries to share information with each other. This might be translation, adaptation, and/or distribution
   • Provide one-page fact sheets that can be easily copied in large quantities
   • Ensure material can be uploaded easily to the website
   • Run a train the trainer programme for developing countries
   • Further develop mentoring links to universities
   Guidelines
   
   • Disseminate screening questionnaire from guidelines (accepted by Respiration for publication)
   • Publish the full evidence-base for the guidelines in the February 2006 edition of the PCRJ
   • Produce a summary of the guidelines for wide and free distribution
   • Update the guidelines periodically, particularly when new primary care studies are available
   Conference
   
   • Ensure a successful conference in Oslo
   • Ensure the conference programme reflects our ambitions
   • Train a new generation of presenters
   Education
   
   • Set up a new Education Committee responsible for
   • Dissemination of guidelines
   • Exchange of good practice and resources
   • Production of new IPCRG publications
   • Implementation of the publications working party recommendations to ensure we maintain an academic journal presence
   Research
   
   • Undertake research collaborations between national networks eg EU bid

• IPCRG Conference
  2006 8 - 11 June 2006
• IPCRG Annual General Meeting
  10-11.30 Thursday, 8 June, Oslo.

Temporary address for correspondence
Oct 2005 - May 2006
IPCRG, c/o Smithy House
Waterbeck, Lockerbie, DG11 3EY, UK