No. 35 March 1999From the Editor: Conferences, conferences....This year seems to be full of conferences sponsored by the IFMBE. Firstly, we have the two triennial, regional IFMBE conferences. The first is in Tallinn, Estonia, where the 11th Nordic-Baltic Conference on Biomedical Engineering takes place on 6-10 June, 1999 (http://www.cb.ttu.ee/nbc99). There is then a conference in Seoul, South Korea, on 12-15 September, 1999 with the Fourtth Asia-Pacific Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering (http://bme.hanyang.ac.kr/APCMBE99). The IFMBE is also heavily involved in the meeting taking place in Vienna, on 4-7 November, 1999 with the title EMBEC'99 European Medical & Biological Engineering Conference. This is the first attempt to provide a forum for medical and biological engineering interests that encompasses the whole of Europe (http://www.univie.ac.at/EMBEC99). In addition to these, our transnational member ESEM organises its Fifth conference in Barcelona, Spain, on 30 May - 2 June, 1999 (http://www.esem.org/esem.html) with IFMBE sponsorship. However, this is not all. A special topic conference on Biosignal Interpretation takes place in Chicago, USA, on 12-14 June, 1999. This the Third International Workshop on this topic. The previous ones were arranged in Aalborg, Denmark and Kanagawa, Japan (http://www.eecs.uic.edu/~bsi99). Additionally, the EMBS is arranging its regular annual conference in Atlanta, USA in late October. A number of national conferences with international participation will also take place. We clearly have a problem with these many general topic conferences as only one of these is devoted to a special theme (biosignal interpretation). Naturally, many of these are intended to have a regional or national 'catchment area'. However, with this much un-coordination the IFMBE runs the risk of sponsoring conferences that cannot attract a good audience nor meet its costs. This issue has been discussed by the IFMBE Administrative Council. The guidelines for requesting IFMBE sponsorship have been rewritten to better manage this proliferation. Unfortunately it is not enough to provide guidelines. The IFMBE needs to also have a policy to make these guidelines effective. The situation in Europe is a special case that needs careful attention. There is the general integration trend in Europe with the European Union comprising 15 countries and a number of new countries wishing to join the EU. We have the ESEM, now a transnational member of the IFMBE. We also have a European working group and the Framework programs of the European Union on R&D, and, last but not least, we have our member societies in Europe. Somehow the IFMBE needs to find a way to provide better value to its European members. In the IFMBE's sister organisation, the International Organisation of Medical Physics, IOMP, this was solved a long time ago. The European member societies of the IOMP established a European Federation of Organisations in Medical Physics, the EFOMP. The EFOMP and the IOMP have a close relationship in addition to sharing a common membership base in Europe. Maybe the IFMBE needs an equivalent of the EFOMP in medical and biological engineering in Europe? | ||