Bioengineering Opens the Door to the Future"Engineers shape the sustainable future" was the title and is the core of the message engineers sent to the government from the World Engineering Convention (WEC) 2004 held in November 2004 in Shanghai, China. This event gathered more than 3000 engineers from all over the world. It was held under the auspices of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, co-sponsored by UNESCO and organized by the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and the Shanghai Municipal Government. A large number of attendees at the Convention were biomedical engineers, visiting mainly the "Biological Engineering & Health Care" Track of the Convention. The presentations and the discussions showed that biomedical engineers significantly contribute to the development of a better world based on technological applications for health, wealth and well-being. China has realized that biomedical engineering is a key area for building its scientific infrastructure. The country has a long tradition in herbal medicine – green tea being one of the old bio-tech products The Chinese have also developed acupuncture and many other methods we know as "Traditional Oriental Medicine" which still evoke growing interest even among physicians educated in conventional western medicine based on the principles of the natural sciences. Alcohol fermentation was known in China already in 11000 BC. A vaccine against smallpox was discovered as early as the 6th century. China, together with Japan, Korea and Singapore, seems to have an advantage over the European Union and the United States as they have fewer restrictions on the use of human stem cells for the growth of tissue of any type in order to minimize rejection of transplants by the human immune system. Therefore, Chinese scientists presented impressive results at the Convention in the field of organ regeneration. The Chinese National Science Foundation has declared their priorities for the forthcoming years: research on biomechanics and biotechnology at molecular, subcellular and cellular levels; modeling and emulation of biological systems closely associated with animal experiments and clinical data; structure, physical and chemical properties of biomedical materials and their relationship with biological compatibility; the structure, metabolic pathways and somatic effects of degradable biomaterials on organisms, new scaffold materials in tissue engineering and its interactions with cells and extracellular matrix, and studies of new types of artificial organs; high quality retrieval of information from biomedical signals, with special emphasis on one-step sensing techniques and technologies for non-invasive, real-time and dynamic measurement or detection, and innovative techniques for medical imaging, particularly functional imaging. In 2003, the Chinese Development Planning Commission decided to accelerate the industrialization of high tech findings and results, to guide and promote sustainable, fast and healthy growth of China's biomedical engineering industry. The objective of this project is to make China's biomedical engineering products reach an industrial scale of 50 billion-70 billion Yuan (US$ 6 – 8.5 billion or EUR 4.4 - 6.2 billion) in 2005 and to maintain an annual growth of 10%-15%. Still, China remains a country of big contradictions, generally and with regard to health care. For example, the Greater Shanghai Circle is one of the most developed areas in China, with an average growth rate of 9%, and, I assume, one of the fastest growing areas in the world economy. All those who attended the WEC learned that every second high-rise crane in the world is currently installed in the Shanghai area. Of course, in this area science and technology based companies and institutes grow fast and the area becomes attractive for many scientific talents. High technology industry develops rapidly and biological and medical engineering ranks high in this environment. The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology encourages technical progress and innovations and facilitates the development of new high technology products, which also have a high economic competitiveness. Among the approximately 20 priority fields supported by the Ministry are life science and bio-engineering technologies as well as medical science and bio-medical engineering. In contrast to the widespread opinion that Far East economies base a lot of their products on imported knowledge and that China is only a good option for producing relatively simple medical products based on labor intensive production, the new devices produced in modern Shanghai are developed predominantly with self-owned intellectual property rights and at the same time adopt international standards. On the other hand, the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) crisis in 2003 showed some weak sides of the Chinese health infrastructure. The crisis forced the Chinese government to analyze their health system very thoroughly and resulted in healthcare becoming one of the priorities for large-scale investment. This action aims at improving the health care system substantially and preventing epidemics such as SARS more effectively. However, one has to remember that in rural areas where more than 800 million people are living, healthcare will need to develop from a very basic to a modern one with large technological and financial efforts. The IFMBE is active and dedicated to building bridges between developed and developing countries, particularly in transferring health technology and achieving conditions for a rational use of resources and technology, cutting costs and creating a cleaner environment for our and future generations. Many biomedical engineers devote their whole career to creating life-improving solutions. The time has come to reward them – the IFMBE tri-annually presents the Zworykin Award and the Otto Schmitt Award at the World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. In conjunction with IOMP, IFMBE awards one distinguished biomedical engineer with the IUPESM Award of Merit. The Chair of the IFMBE Awards Committee sent out the Call for Nominations in order to enable the biomedical engineering community to prepare a large number of nominations of very high quality. I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of the Awards Committee members because it is not easy to decide between our colleagues who have contributed in key areas of our field. Even the nomination itself, coming from your nearest collaborators who have recognized and nominated a distinguished scientist for one of the Awards, means a great honor for any member of our biomedical engineering community. Last, but not least I would like to share with you a few thoughts that were always in my mind while preparing this issue of the News. That was at the time the strong earthquake struck parts of Asia and Africa, taking such a large number of human lives – the humanitarian organizations and local authorities expect the final death toll to exceed 300 000 people. In our attempts to improve the health of patients and the wellbeing of the whole population, biomedical engineers are at the cutting edge of modern science and technology: it seems that soon we will be able to replace not only tissue but whole organs; we see more and more of the invisible, again not only in the dark like V. Zworykin did 50 years ago; we also learned to understand the last sense we thought not to understand, smell (read more about the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in this issue). There are other engineers who do understand their profession and who also have developed tools that can be used for preventing disasters. Some of them are geo-scientists. They knew about the earthquake on December 26, they were able to predict the tsunamis coming to the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand.... How is it possible that we have not built up the infrastructure to protect the people, cities and villages from the coming waves? We have forgotten, or lost some of our senses. I am not referring to the so-called "sixth sense" (or the ability to hear or feel low frequencies) that saved most of the wild animals in the coast areas struck by the deadly tsunami. I am referring to our (perhaps lost) ability to set priorities when there is a need to predict the kind of future we do not want to come and therefore we prefer to stick our heads into the sand. Finally I come back to the beginning of the Editorial: to the WEC Declaration that urges everybody to think over and to try to shape a sustainable future. Read the Declaration, it has only two pages, and though it is very simple and general, try not only to think about it but also to act in its sense, here and today, everywhere and in the future, for the future.
Ratko Magjarevic
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