Progress Report of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Medical and Biological Engineering in EuropeDear colleaguesAs you may remember, a discussion forum took place in connection with the First EMBEC Conference in Vienna, November 1999, on whether we need a European medical and biological engineering organisation. The result was that 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. The committee has now been active for little over a year. We met face-to-face in London in March 2000 and in Chicago in July 2000. In Chicago we also arranged a meeting with the European IFMBE affiliates to discuss our findings and to get feedback from you all. Progress reports have also been printed regularly in the IFMBE News. The London meeting produced the work plan of three main activities that we have since been following:
Our latest meeting took place close to Schiphol airport in late January 2001 with an attendance of nearly 20 committee members. This meeting agreed unanimously that we should go ahead with a European organisation for MBE, which meets two conditions. First, that this new organisation will not be in competition with existing societies in Europe nor with IFMBE. Second, that the aims and functions of such a new organisation add value to what we are already doing in Europe. The intention is to engage the entire European medical and biological engineering community into this venture. It is estimated that today this community comprises 20,000 experts working in academia, research, industry and supporting the use of health technology in healthcare. For comparison, it is estimated that the size of the community in USA is 30,000 experts. There are two reasons why a unified medical and biological engineering 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 healthcare are high on the agenda 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 and having some influence. Based on these considerations, we formulated the aims and tasks of this new organisation tentatively as follows: "To improve the health, wealth and well-being of the people of Europe through the coherent and timely application of medical and biological engineering knowledge and skills by
Further we agreed that we must consult the European IFMBE affiliate member societies on this decision in order to hear your comments on this. We also agreed to arrange a workshop on this in connection with the next MEDICON conference in Pula, Croatia, 12-15 June 2001, to which you are all invited (see attached announcement). The reason for these two steps is that we must be certain to have the support of the European IFMBE affiliate societies before broadening this initiative to cover the entire European medical and biological engineering community. Similarly we must be assured that this initiative will also in the future have the support of IFMBE and is not seen as being in conflict with IFMBE's interests. To put it simply, we must make sure that our home base is fully aware of this initiative supporting and participating in it before really embarking on it. Therefore this contact to seek your approval and comments to this initiative. There is of course a little more flesh to the skeleton framework outlined above. First, how will we organise this new organisation? The idea we are pursuing (but note that we have not decided on it) is the model that was set up in USA after lengthy and difficult discussions in the early 90s, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, AIMBE. If you are not familiar with AIMBE please look at its homepage at www.aimbe.org. As indicated this is the model. What we intend to do is to adapt that to European needs. At our Schiphol meeting we assigned a small task group to draft a set of by-laws for this new organisation and to present these for discussion at the Pula workshop. Furthermore, if you and IFMBE agree that this is the right way to go then we all need to understand that it will take a few years before this European medical and biological engineering community is created. In addition to the time factor, this will require funds to hold meetings face-to-face and to conduct a dialogue with all parties. Therefore we have acted in anticipation of a positive answer from you and IFMBE and have submitted a proposal to a European funding agency called COST (Co-Operation on Science and Technology), which covers all European countries, not only the EU members. It funds concertation of research, not direct research. For more information on COST have a look at their homepage at www.netmaniacs.com/cost or www.cfm-resources.com/c/castle). This proposal was submitted in order to arrange a series of workshops over a three-year period to discuss and prepare this proposal in detail. Attached for your information a copy of the draft proposal that we have submitted to COST. If it would be accepted the earliest start date is the beginning of 2002. This is the reason for our haste in this as the process of acceptance takes roughly a year. To conclude, this is a very big step and to be successful needs the support of all IFMBE member societies in Europe (and the support of others as well). Therefore, we must first know whether the IFMBE members would support this action. We would like to receive your comments to this initiative in writing if possible before the workshop in Pula in mid-June. Second, we hope that all European IFMBE affiliates will find this interesting and will designate and send their representatives to this workshop. Finally, please direct your replies and questions to Professor Helmut Hutten, who has agreed to act as the focal point in this communication between the affiliate societies and the committee. His address is given below.
Niilo Saranummi Contact address:
Professor Helmut Hutten
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