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The inaugural meeting of the Emergency Medicine Research Group Edinburgh (EMERGE) took place one afternoon in 2008 in the salubrious setting of the Canny Man’s pub in Morningside.

The Emergency Department of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh already had a long and distinguished track record of research activity led by Professor Colin Robertson. By 2008 there were many research and audit projects on-going, some led by Emergency Medicine and some by other specialities, but there was a need to co-ordinate this to ensure compliance with increasing governance and increasing clinical activity, to ensure that Emergency Medicine led and owned the research that took place inside the ED and to ensure that our patients had the maximum benefit and opportunity to participate in research activity.

The ‘group of seven’ formed EMERGE, dedicated to ensure research activity is integral to improving patient care, and on that day established its founding aims: to support researchers and projects to improve the quality of the research; to co-ordinate ED research activity to facilitate and optimise research and minimise disruption to normal clinical practice; and to raise the local and national profile of academic EM. From an initial two research nurses, EMERGE has grown exponentially into an exciting, forward thinking and motivated team increasing the quality, quantity and impact of our research and ensuring as many of our patients as possible are offered the opportunity to participate in research – without this we are not offering them best care.

Over the last decade EMERGE has led on grants totalling more than 10 million pounds and has published extensively including notably in NEJM, JAMA, Lancet, Lancet Respiratory, Circulation, JACC and EHJ. We look forward to the next decade, to taking on the challenges of increasing ED clinical demand, the opportunities of digital biomarkers and biotechnology and the challenges of the data revolution, to continue our forward thinking, energetic, enthusiastic approach and to continue the advancement we have made in the last decade.