A New Organisation for Medical and Biological Engineering in Europe?

Co-chairs:

Joe Barbenel, Bioengineering Unit, University of Strathclyde, UK 
Helmut Hutten, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Technical University of Graz, Austria
Niilo Saranummi, VTT Information Technology, Finland

A discussion forum took place in connection with the 1st EMBEC conference in Vienna, November 1999 on whether we need a European medical and biological engineering organisation. The result was that Professor Jean-Pierre Morucci, President of IFMBE, set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate the need of a new European organisation and to propose a solution if a need is identified. This committee has now been active for little over a year and has identified two issues that it is addressing: (1) creating a "one voice " mechanism for medical and biological engineering in Europe, (2) accreditation of MBE educational programs in Europe.

This workshop discusses the progress of the committee on the 1st line of activity. The 2nd line of activity is the topic of another separate workshop. Before these workshops an oral session SS5- BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE takes place where committee members present status reports.

With regard to the 1st activity, there are two reasons why a unified ("one voice") MBE community is needed. First there are the developments taking place in Europe as exemplified by the EU Framework Programmes in R&D, the European Research Area (ERA) and the Bologna declaration (and lately the European Education Area). All these demonstrate that in addition to the national decision making processes more and more decisions are taken at the European level. Second, affordable and high quality health and health care are high on the agendas of citizens and nations in Europe. Medical and biological engineering is one key area in satisfying those concerns. Divided we will not be successful in being heard nor having influence. The proposal of the committee is that we need a European organisation for MBE. This new organisation shall not compete with existing national or European organisations or with IFMBE. Instead it shall add value to IFMBE and to its European affiliated societies. The intention is to engage the whole European MBE community into this Action. It is estimated that today this community comprises 20 000 experts working in academia, research, industry and supporting the use of health technology in health care. For comparison, it is estimated that the size of the community in USA is 30 000 experts.

The aims of the workshop are threefold. First, to inform European biomedical engineers about this initiative, second, to discuss the proposal, and third, to engage additional people into the process of discussing and deciding what the aims and tasks of this new organisation should be and how it should be created.