Flemming Thyge and Anders Orpana visited DAN Europe headquarters in Roseto, Italia the 5^th and 6^thof June 2013 and met with several of key staff – especially Guy Thomas (Exec. Vice President Missions and Operations) and Massimo Stirparo ((Acting) Training Manager).The purpose of the visit was to discuss cooperation on both scientific and course levels.

DAN Europe is interested in disabled diving – and in how to make that part of the diving world even safer. They hold a prestigious scientific level and they want to work with us!  

We agreed on developing a roadmap towards a proper scientific project that builds on our DDI Outcome measurement project that also adds DAN data. When operational it will use a DAN web-solution for data gathering. In the mean time we have a golden opportunity to really gather the available data all DDI activity create in the paper-based DDI Outcome measurement project (that also include quality management data, that will not be included in the DAN-DDI project).

We also agreed to open up DDI activity to DAN sample gathering by informing them when and where upcoming DDI activity takes place, so that DAN may come and do Doppler tests (for micro-bubbles), collect dive-profile data etc. on disabled divers that agree to participate. Naturally open water dive activity is most interesting for DAN to gather data from. More info of how this will be handled will come later.

Some more levels of direct cooperation were also discussed, but it’s too early to go into details in what that might lead to.

A big thanks to DAN Europe for receiving us well – and for their time and interest in our work. This is a crucial possible step into the academic world of medical science for DDI – to make it work we need the support and cooperation of all the DDI family. I’m confident we can make this a milestone in the quest of promoting scuba diving as therapy!