On July 20, 2009, the Generalitat de Catalunya and Obra Social “la Caixa” signed with the HUVH and VHIR an agreement to promote a Endoscopic Surgery Center: The World Institute for Digestive Endoscopy Research (WIDER-Barcelona), led by Dr. José Ramón Armengol. The institute is focused on teaching, research and dissemination of gastrointestinal endoscopy in all its facets, both medical and surgical, with special attention to developmentof methodology known as transluminal endoscopic surgery through natural orifices (NOTES).

On the 1st and 2nd of December 2014, WIDER organized the 8th Edition of the International Course in NOTES, where over 130 doctors, surgeons and researchers from all over the globe participated. It offered presentations about simulations such as Single port access, NOTES experimental, NOTES clinic, NOTES applied to obesity and transrenal surgery. In endoluminal endoscopy new diagnostic alternatives were presented in bilipancreatic diseases, and in endomulnial therapeutic specialty Poem’s new techniques with Acalasia treatment and new techniques in tumor resection. Furthermore, in this edition two surgeries were broadcasted, one of them from the clinical side, endoscopy, Acalasia patients and tumoral and polypoid deformation of the digestive tract. The other video was broadcasted from VHIR’s ‘Animal Facility’, very sophisticated bile and pancreatic drainage interventions using ecoendoscopy.

We can say that the meeting has become the world’s most outstanding forum about advanced endoscopic and transluminal surgery.