News from Asian-Pacific Working Group

The Asian-pacific Working Group Meeting of the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering was held on December 13, 2001, at Chung Yuan Christian University.

The attendants included Prof. Chow, Daniel from Hong Kong, Dr. Goh, James C.H. from Singapore, Prof. Kao, Tsair from Taiwan, Prof. Kirsner, Richard L.G. from Australia, Prof. Lee, Myoungho from Korea and Prof. Tsujilka, Katsuhiko from Japan. Prof. Chen, Y.T., director of Institute of biomedical sciences, Academia Sinica, made an opening speck of "Translation of the Genomic Medicine into Clinical Reality: Challenges of Pompe Disease."

The purpose of this meeting is to provide a further communication for the members in Asian-pacific area and to improve the co-operation in the field of biomedical engineering, which is becoming increasingly important.

We hope to build a membership database on the web site of each society via trying to organise new regional conferences in Asian-pacific area to encourage the research in Asia. Therefore, we may be able to promote and increase the relationship in developing the biomedical engineering among Asia-pacific region.

On the other hand, it is also important to encourage and organise more national society to become the member of IFMBE. Therefore, we may share the research results of the related field. And finally, we also want to propose a working group on physical approach to oriental medical. It has become a trend that more and more medical research involved the application of oriental medicine. This will be a very advanced development in biomedical engineering and we have great expectation in it.

Asian - Pacific Working Group Meeting at Chung Yuan Christian University (on the photo, left to right): Prof. Kao, Tsair; Dr. Huang, David Y.C., Prof. Tsujilka Katsuhiko; Prof. Lee, Myoungho; Prof. Chang, Walter H.C.; Prof. Kirner, Richard L.C.; Prof. Goh, James C.H.; Prof. Chow, Daniel.