Abbreviated version of the article published in:
Rosenfalck A. The history of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering. In: The Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering, ed. Aspects of biomedical engineering in Denmark. Copenhagen, 1998, pp. 7-18.

The history of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering

The Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering has been active for 25 years. The aim of this paper is to describe the background for founding the society, and to shed light on some of the society's work during the first 25 years.

The first general assembly in the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering was held on 27 November 1973. It was prepared by a group from universities, industry and engineering societies. They did find it important with a forum for collaboration between these groups. The first president should come from medicine.

The Nordic collaboration in this area has always been large. Two Nordic guides to key persons and companies in biomedical engineering were published in 1969 and in 1975. British-Danish collaboration was great; a large group (about 50) came to Denmark for a common seminar in 1972 and the Sixth Nordic meeting of medical and biological engineering was held in Aberdeen in 1984. The first Nordic meeting on medical and biological engineering was held in Finland in January 1970 (200 participants) and the second Nordic meeting in Oslo in June 1971 with 300 participants and a large commercial exhibition. At this meeting the initiator, Øivind Lorentsen saluted with a 'Lur', which has been repeated at later Nordic meetings. The third meeting was in Finland 1975. The new Danish Society hosted the IV Nordic meeting in 1977. This meeting was held at The Technical University of Denmark with Prof. Georg Bruun as President (250 participants). Since then the meetings have been held every three years. In 1990 it was held at Aalborg University (150 participants). By now there are often two or three conferences on biomedical engineering each year. It is therefore excellent that Finland was able to collect about 400 participants to a conference in Tampere in 1997. The next conference is planned to be held in Estonia in 1999.

The predecessor of the Society

In the 1960s the Danish Biomedical Engineering Committee (DBMEC) was extremely active. The committee was established in 1966, connected with the Danish Academy of Sciences and supported by the Medical Research Council and the Danish Council for Scientific and Technical Research. The aim was to promote co-operation between the medical, biological and engineering disciplines. The Committee was headed by Prof. Tybjerg Hansen and had an academic secretary, Lone Dybkjær (now member of the European Parliament).

The members of the Danish Biomedical Engineering Committee were elected among the most active groups at universities and hospitals. In 1968 DBMEC established three sub-committees: a contact committee, an education committee and an industrial committee.

The Foundation of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering

In 1969, the Danish Biomedical Engineering Committee suggested starting a biomedical society and the three subcommittees and active persons in the field received a questionnaire. The majority preferred the existing organisation and expressed great admiration for the excellent work carried out by the chairman of the DBMEC, Prof. Tybjerg Hansen and by Lone Dybkjær. The hesitant attitude was also due to the fact that the active group in Denmark was larger than the societies in the other Nordic countries. In addition, a large number (approx. 30%) of the active group were physicians, dentists or scientists. Some preferred a society with the aim to join the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering. At that time, only a few were individual members of the Federation.

However, the support from the research councils to DBMEC was not continued after May 1972 and in January 1973 the head of the Danish Academy of Sciences, Bjerre Lavesen, took the initiative of planning a biomedical society. He asked Prof. Georg Bruun to arrange a meeting at the Electronics Institute at DTU. Lone Dybkjær and Annelise Rosenfalck were asked to participate and the group agreed on the importance of establishing a biomedical society. They were also eager to continue the biomedical activities of the two engineering societies in Denmark, where Sven Erik Jensen, Torben Jørgensen and Peder Holmkjær were very active. They negotiated with their societies and the societies helped to establish laws for the biomedical society and promised financial support for the first few years. However, in the final negotiations it became clear that the President of the society should have an MSc in Engineering and that engineers, who were not members of one of the engineering societies could not join the society. The group could not agree on these restrictions and decided to start an independent society.

The first general assembly of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering was held on 27 November 1973. Georg Bruun had asked Professor H. Hertz from Lund's Technical University to speak about: 'New methods for image-recording in biology and medicine'.

The aim of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering

The aim of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering is to promote the scientific and technical development of biomedical engineering. To reach this goal the society should make an effort to:

Create contact between groups of different education and occupation interested in biomedical engineering
Promote mutual education between these groups by arranging meetings, seminars and study-groups
Collaborate with the Scandinavian and international Societies in biomedical engineering
Provide information on biomedical engineering.

In the law it is also stated that when electing the board, the goal is to obtain a wide representation from all groups occupied in biomedical engineering.

The first President, Prof. Erik Skinhøj was chief physician in neurophysiology in Copenhagen and Prof. Dr. Med. Jørgen Fabricius, chief physician in cardiology in Odense, took over in 1975. Annelise Rosenfalck, electronic engineer and Prof. of biomedical engineering in Aalborg followed in 1981, Prof. Dr. Med. Ole Siggaard-Andersen, Head of the Clinical Chemistry Department at Herlev University Hospital, followed in 1992. The present President associate Prof. Dr. Med. Hans Stødkilde-Jørgensen, The MR Center of Aarhus University Hospital, took over in 1995.

It has been important that members from the industry have been very active. The first Secretary of the society was Armand Schlägel; he came from industry (Simonsen and Weel), the second Sven Erik Jensen came from the hospital sector and the third, Gert Kokholm also came from industry (Radiometer). They have held the main responsibilities for the society and all the activities have depended on them.

Some activities of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering

The main activity has been to arrange five to six meetings a year. This has been carried out pretty much in the same line as by DBMEC's contact committee. At all meetings, new subjects have been presented from the medical and the technical aspect. In the first few years, only a few courses were held, but several of the meetings acted as courses and were free of charge. It was attempted to plan meetings in all parts of the country. They usually have been held at universities and in hospitals. These meetings have generally been well attended (40-100 participants).

Some of the most successful meetings were arranged by industry and are usually held in December. Industry invites the members to come to their plants. Members of the industry plan the meetings and the speakers are half physicians and half engineers. The clue is a nice meal, where the participants can continue the discussion. These meetings usually have at least 100 participants.

Many meetings have been planned together with other medical societies, and WHO's European headquarters in Copenhagen has invited the society several times to meetings on technology assessment.

On a number of occasions, it has been possible to arrange meetings with international speakers, when EEC seminars were held in Denmark. We have always attempted to inform people about the EEC projects and to keep members of the society updated.

Biomedical engineering has been an integral part of the EEC biomedical and health research program since the first concerted actions was initiated in 1978. The physician Steen Dawids was one of the first three project leaders. In the first few years the activity was planned by a group of two participants from each of the EEC countries. Steen Dawids and Annelise Rosenfalck were elected by the medical research council to represent Denmark. Initially about one million ECU was spent on three concerted actions, mainly for travelling expenses of the 100 teams, who participated in the activity. The BIOMED I program (1990-94) had 133 million ECU available, which supported 362 concerted actions and 41 shared cost projects with a total of 7300 participants. A shared cost project grants money for labour, instrumentation and travel. In the running program BIOMED II, 336 million ECU will be awarded. There is only limited information on the number of participants from Denmark but just to mention some examples, it can be said that AAU at present participates in at least four shared cost projects and that DTU has an even greater activity. Many researchers have also participated in the Advanced Informatics in Medicine programme AIM, and in several programs for handicap engineering. It is interesting to note that Nordic collaboration within research has been increased by EEC collaboration. The Nordic countries in the initial years participated in the activities as guests. Later, they became affiliated members and finally in 1994, they became full members and project leaders.

International collaboration

The Society joined the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering in 1976. The Federation was founded in 1958 and held its first international conference in Paris in 1959. About six Danes participated in this meeting, four came from the Institute of Neurophysiology in Copenhagen. At present a conference is held every three years. The 18th conference was held in Nice in 1997. The other Nordic countries joined the Federation in the late 1960s and Denmark in 1976. However, there were about ten individual members of the Federation since 1959. Presently the Federation has 44 member countries. The history of the international federation was published in 1997.

The Federation publishes the Journal of Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering, which individual members of the Danish Society can obtain for a very low subscription rate. In recent years they also started publishing a newsletter, which is distributed to all members.

The DMTS board has attended the meetings of the secretaries and the general assembly at most of the
international conferences. Peder Holmkjær has been a member of the clinical engineering working group. Annelise Rosenfalck has served on the IFMBE European Working group and at the nomination committee
several times. She was recently appointed Founding Fellow of the International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering.

The Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering sponsored and participated in the arrangement of the IMIA (the International Medical Informatics Association) and the IFMBE Working Conference on 'Biosignal Interpretation' on 25-27 August 1993. It was the first meeting where IMIA and IFMBE arranged a joint meeting on 'Biosignal Interpretation'. The organisers were Prof. Jan van Bemmel from The Netherlands, Prof. Niilo Saranummi from Finland, and Annelise Rosenfalck from Denmark. The meeting was held in Rebild Bakker near Aalborg. The main sponsor for the meeting was the Commission of the European Communities-DG XII. The main topics were: Detection and parameter estimation, Monitoring and real time interpretation, Model based biosignal interpretation. The scientific program included 47 papers of which 30 papers were selected to be published in a special issue of Methods of Information in Medicine, January 1994 [9]. The meeting was extraordinary in that most of the time was left for discussion. The participants (about 70) came from Europe, the USA and Japan. The usual excursion at the meeting became a surprise for the participants. There was no bus! We were in the midst of nature and walked with guidance to Rebild Bakker. The second meeting on biosignal interpretation was held in Japan in 1996.

Nordic collaboration

The Nordic activities started in 1969 mainly on Finnish initiative. Two Nordic guides were published in 1969 and 1977. Planning meetings have been held regularly. Planning of Scandinavian meetings was the main goal and the first Nordic meeting was held in Helsinki in 1970 under the auspices of the IFMBE. The Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering has sponsored and arranged two Scandinavian meetings in 1977 in Copenhagen and in 1990 in Aalborg. The IV Nordic Meeting was held at the Technical University of Denmark, 28 June-2 July 1977, near Copenhagen. Prof. Georg Bruun was President. Sixty-seven papers were presented in two parallel sessions and in poster sessions.

The Eighth Nordic meeting was held at Aalborg University on 10-13 June 1990. Five themes were selected: Diagnosis and care for the cancer patient; Monitoring and care of the critically ill patient; Diagnosis and care of the patient with neurological disorders; Quality and technological assessment in healthcare; and Knowledge based systems. Before the conference dinner, the municipality of Aalborg had invited the participants to a reception at Aalborg art museum. The 'Lur' was blown.

It has often been attempted to publish a Nordic Journal, which could be distributed among members. The problem has always been whether a high scientific level can be obtained if the journal is published in a Scandinavian language. Another problem is finances; the biomedical industry has often hesitated to buy expensive advertising. Over a span of years we had a Swedish publication Medicinsk Teknik, which was sent to Danish members. However, the level of the papers decreased considerably. For about two years a high quality journal Medicinsk Teknologi was published in Denmark and distributed free of charge to the medical profession, but not to engineers.

In recent years the contact at society level is less frequent, however, at the scientific level it has increased due to EEC sponsored projects.

Future of the Danish Society for Biomedical Engineering

At present the Society has more than 210 individual members and about 22 industrial members. The meetings are open for everyone interested in biomedical engineering. A new trend is to arrange two-day courses, with a course fee, because it is possible to obtain support for postgraduate education at present. The first evening is combined with a meeting of the society.

The society has a webpage: http://www.ouh.dk/dmts/, where information on upcoming meetings, members lists, etc., can be retrieved. The latest contribution is a discussion group.

Annelise Rosenfalck

Department of Medical Informatics and Image Analysis
Aalborg University, Denmark

* In Danish: Dansk MedikoTeknisk Selskab (DMTS)