In 1999, the Institute of Genetics and Reproductive in Chongqing Obstetrics & Gynecology Hospital successfully organized the first Chongqing ART Conference. Since then, the consecutive annual meetings have been held during the past 18 years. There have been over 100 prominent ART specialists around the world who came to Chongqing and shared their profound knowledge and experiences with the Chinese ART specialists. The total number of participants in the past years exceeds 5000. This conference has become one of the most
recognized platforms where the state of the art technologies in ART are presented and practical operations are discussed and agreed upon among participants. The conference has been an important bridge liaising IVF professionals especially for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mainland China.  As always, it is our pleasure to announce that the 19th Chongqing ART Conference will be held in Chongqing on September 21st to23rd, 2017.We are going to have Cristina Hickman, De-Yi Liu, Harold Bourne, Hideaki Watanabe, Hitoshi Shiku, John Stevens, Joyce Harper, Ling Chi, Markus Montag, Marius Meintjes, Martin Travis Langley, Michael Davies Mirjana Martic,
Moira O'Bryan and Wan-Song Alfred Wun from Australian, Germany, Japan, UK, and USA to share their rich knowledge and their latest scientific findings. We will also have a good number of Chinese IVF professionals to present their latest achievements during this Conference.
We are entering a big data era along with the development and implantation of the new technologies in IVF treatment which would have a significant impact from now onwards in the area of the decision making process, quality supervision and clinical laboratory analyses among other things. Therefore, we have set the theme of this conference as “The Technologies of IVF laboratory in the era of the Big Data” in order to highlight the importance of the application of Big Data and the analyses in day to day practices such as oocyte pick-ups, insemination, assessment of exposure time during embryo/gamete handling, volume sizes used at culture on embryo viability etc.
The 19th Chongqing ART Conference would be of great interest to all professionals working in ART field. Many thanks to each of you for your support to the Chongqing ART Conference!

 
See you in Chongqing,
China!

Hua Zhang

Chongqing Obstetrics &Gynecology Hospital

Guoning Huang

Chongqing Obstetrics &Gynecology Hospital Institute of Genetics and Reproduction

March 15th, 2017