1st Latin American Conference on Biomedical EngineeringMazatlán, Mexico, November 1998 The annual CORAL meetings (Regional Council of Biomedical Engineering in Latin America) held in Colombia 1996 and in Venezuela 1997 chose Mexico as the site for the First Latin American Conference. It was agreed that this conference will now be organized every three years. Cuba will be the site for the 2nd Latin American Conference in 2001. The conference was held in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico, from 11-14 November 1998. It was organized by SOMIB, the Mexican Society of Biomedical Enginering, with the co-sponsorship of IFMBE, CORAL, IEEE-EMBS and PAHO. Several committees were involved in organizing the conference. These are indicated in the box. Some of the invited speakers in the plenary sessions included Christopher Druzgalsky (USA), who presented “Acoustic Evaluation of Respiration”, sponsored by Mexican universities, and Metin Akay (USA), who talked about “Wavelets in Biomedicine“. His presence was sponsored by IEEE-EMBS. Antonio Hernández (Pan American Health Organization) spoke on “The Health Care Reform Processes in Latin American and Caribbean Countries and Health Care Technology Assessment“, sponsored by PAHO. Kok Swang Tan (Medical Devices Office of Canada) talked about the “Susceptibility of Medical Devices to Electromagnetic Interference”. His participation was sponsored by PAHO. Javier Rossell (Spain) presented “Bioimpedance: New Techniques and Applications for an Old Idea”. His participation was sponsored by IEEE-EMBS. Raúl Carvajal gave the keynote speech on “Nonlinear Methods in ECG Analysis”. This was dedicated to the memory of Dr García Moreira. His presence was sponsored by the University of Sinaloa. The simultaneous Spanish-English-Spanish translation of the presentations and round-table discussions was sponsored by IFMBE. A total of 247 papers were received from 12 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, France, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, United States and Venezuela) by the deadline. The papers were reviewed by the academic and technical committee, chaired by Veronica Medina and Oscar Yañez. All communication was by email and the Internet. In total 207 papers were accepted for the conference. Information on the conference and the papers presented can be found at http://itzamna.uam.mx/ somib. All the articles presented are available at the “Memories of the First Latin American Conference of Biomedical Engineering”, in the publication “Revista Mexicana de Ing. Biomédica” and also on CD. Several round-table discussions were organized, and there was a high level of discussion and active participation on the part of the members, resulting in very important conclusions being drawn. These included “World Trends in Clinical Engineering”, which were presented and discussed by Antonio Hernández from PAHO, Frank Painter and Bob Morris from the American College of Clinical Engineering and Peter Heimann from CED-IFMBE. Other themes included “Rehabilitation”, “Y2K Problems in Hospitals” and “Health Care Technology Assessment”. Events before and after the conference
Adriana Velazquez Email: adrianavb@compuserve.com President of the Organizing Committee - Dr Ernesto Suaste Mexican Organizing Committee
Academic International Technical Committee formed by CORAL members
Local Organizing Committee - Members of the University of Sinaloa | ||