Progress report

EAMBES

European Alliance of Medical and Biological Engineering & Sciences

This progress report is written after the 1st full meeting of the ProTem group in Schiphol, February 16-17th 2002.

Status with endorsements

All 30 IFMBE affiliated organisations in Europe have endorsed the Vienna resolution. These are:

The target set in Vienna was to have a majority by the end of year 2001.

A few of the endorsements have expressed concerns or reservations. Some touch the financing of this new organisation and express concern that we need to find ways to finance it so that it does not need much funding from its members. This is something that was already expressed in Vienna and the reason for establishing a business plan WG. Some were concerned that the new organisation may not be in competition with existing ones. Again this was discussed and agreed and included into the Vienna resolution. Summarising, it seems that we all share the same concerns. Solving these is another thing and is a task and challenge to us all.

CHART proposal submitted to EU / Quality of Life Program

At the initiative of Jean-Louis Coatrieux, Marc Nyssen and myself the ProTem group put together a proposal in the category of an "Accompanying Measure" in order to carry out a cartography of biomedical engineering resources in Europe and to stimulate the creation of networks of excellence in our domain.

The proposal was submitted on February 8th with a budget request of app. 100 000 Euros.

EAMBES Statutes

The major part of the meeting time of the ProTem group was used to draft the Constitution and Bylaws of EAMBES. Good progress was made and the work will be continued off-line until the group meets again in Warsaw, April 27-28th.

The current plan is to have a draft available for comments and critique shortly after that. The organisations that have endorsed the formation of EAMBES will be asked to respond within three months (by end of August). If the responses are not too critical, i.e. major changes are not required, then the intention is to proceed with a formal voting of the revised version with a deadline for receiving votes at the end of November. In time to be able to announce in Vienna in connection of the 2nd EMBEC conference that EAMBES has been formed.

2nd EMBEC and EAMBES

The plan is to have good visibility of EAMBES in the Vienna conference. There will be a track on education and accreditation that is organised by EAMBES or more correctly the EAMBES WG on accreditation and education. Also we plan to arrange the 1st European MBE Forum there to discuss "The role of medical and biological engineering & sciences in Europe".