IFMBE News: May 2001

Meeting Report

ICSU International Scientific Unions
Paris
18-20 February 2001

Three members of the ICSU Liaison Committee (Jean-Pierre Morucci, President of IUPESM, Keith Boddy, Past-President of IUPESM and Dov Jaron, President of IFMBE) attended the Meeting of the ICSU International Scientific Unions in Paris on 18-20 February 2001. The meeting, midway between General Assemblies, was the first of its kind and represents an essential step towards improving communication between the Unions themselves, as well as with ICSU's Executive and Secretariat. It largely achieved that goal. Importantly, we were able to establish IUPESM not only as a refreshing addition to the ICSU family but also as a respected contributor.

Introduction

INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE (ICSU)

ICSU is a non-governmental organisation, founded in 1931 to bring together natural scientists in international scientific endeavour. It comprises 98 multi-disciplinary National Scientific Members (scientific research councils or science academies) and 26 international, single-discipline Scientific Unions to provide a wide spectrum of scientific expertise enabling Members to address major international, interdisciplinary issues which none could handle alone. Scientific Union Members are international, non-governmental, professional organisations devoted to the promotion of activities in a particular area of science which have been in existence for at least six years.

ICSU's objectives are set out in its statutes and rules of procedure, to which all Members and Associates of ICSU adhere. One of the fundamental principles of ICSU is that of the universality of science, which affirms the right and freedom of scientists to associate in international scientific activity without regard to such factors as citizenship, religion, creed, political stance, ethnic origin, race, colour, language, age or sex.

Having achieved the status of a Full Member of ICSU in 1999, IUPESM is among the elite of international Unions and must be able to become an influential advocate globally for medical physics and biomedical engineering and to play a full part in establishing its own programmes and collaborating with other members of the ICSU family on projects of global significance.

ICSU Liaison Committee

IUPESM has created an ICSU Liaison Committee whose duties are to:

build on established excellent relations with the ICSU Secretariat;
establish and maintain a good working knowledge of existing and proposed programmes within ICSU;
determine principal and secondary interests of other Unions and bodies within ICSU and generate a spirit of collaboration ;
identify areas of potential future collaboration, especially global projects;
stimulate and consider programme proposals within IUPESM ( IFMBE and IOMP) as candidates for grants either from ICSU itself or other international bodies, such as UNESCO, WHO, European Union, with the support (and stature) of ICSU;
formulate grant proposals and recommend priorities to the IUPESM Council;
participate in ICSU committees and activities;
contribute "populist" articles to ICSU's journal Science International on various aspects of medical physics and biomedical engineering;
prepare proposals and contributions to be made at the ICSU General Assemblies.

Issues discussed

Unions identified priorities for ICSU

The Unions identified priorities for ICSU:

increased feedback and transparency (the latter particularly for grants);
increased visibility and higher profile;
'top-down' leadership on appropriate major issues;
becoming more 'pro-active instead of being primarily reactive;
providing governments with guidelines and authoritative information;
establish a role for ICSU as a legal advisory body between science and politics;
recognise potential problems of co-existence between the 26 Unions and the scientific academies, with their associated inter-academy council and inter-academy panel, and act as a facilitator and catalyst.

Proposed priorities for ICSU support for Scientific Unions' education/capacity building activities

The participants were urged to identify specific practical activities that could be undertaken in the near future to improve collaboration and to strengthen ICSU's capacity building activities. (The definition of capacity building from ICSU is: "activities that lead to the establishment or strengthening of a corps of qualified scientists with a supporting infrastructure - including facilities and working conditions that enable them to conduct research, education, training and advisory work, particularly in areas of direct societal significance".)

1. Ongoing activities of the Scientific Unions in capacity building:

Representatives of the Unions were asked to provide a two-minute statement on what their priorities are in capacity building; recent size and scope of programmes; and future Union priorities for capacity building. The statements of IUPESM were as follows:

IUPESM comprises a global network of 40,000 graduate physical scientists and engineers in about 100 countries. IUPESM has three key programmes to and symbiotic to PCBS (Programme on Capacity Building in Science):

Education, training and continued professional development for the 21st century with particular reference to developing and emerging countries: For instance, regional training courses are held. Support is also provided to young scientists for attending our congresses and, mainly, our world congress (with special award for young scientist presentation of papers). We support also eastern countries and other countries in transition to permit scientists to attend our conferences.
Global medical information networking and implementation for developing and emerging countries. It concerns the provision on the web of education material (a textbook on medical physics and we are working now on an encyclopaedia of biomedical engineering).
Public awareness and education: this concerns, for instance, production on-line of a brochure and hard copies aimed at governmental and public understanding of present and future innovations in physical and engineering sciences in medicine and their implications for health care of patients and people with disabilities.

2. World class scientific research centres

The promotion of world class scientific research centres, with a regional focus, as a capacity building strategy in developing countries was presented by the COSTED representative. What has been the experience of some of the Unions who have used regional approaches to carry out their capacity building activities in developing countries? What suggestions do the Unions have for ICSU regarding the role of regional scientific research centres to support capacity building for science? An interesting experience in Tanzania was described.

One interesting example was given by Dov Jaron "The Co-Laboratory", a major centre with equipment, facilities, staff and knowledge linked electronically to other labs everywhere in the world (a microscope Centre in San Diego is linked to Japan). Could this situation be extended to countries in transition?

3. Conclusion

The participants were urged to identify specific practical activities that could be undertaken in the near future to improve collaboration and to strengthen ICSU's capacity building activities. A spin-off was the identification of activities that could be of potential benefit if adapted for IUPESM. Most notable were:

"pictures with no words" was being used for education and training (via the internet) for developing countries, eliminating language problems. We could also consider having 'lectures' on the internet with local presentation;
'mini-science kits' were being provided for teaching in developing countries;
CD-ROMs were being provided for education and training - this could include schools in all countries to promote interest in physics and engineering as careers;
short- term visits were being sponsored for scientists from developing countries;
an internet journal: specifically, as a first step, IOMP and IFMBE could consider combining their newsletters in an IUPESM newsletter/ journal on our website.

Emerging scientific issues

How to identify them? How to promote relevant ICSU action on them? The Unions were asked to list their emerging scientific issues using keywords. The list proposed by IUPESM is given below:

ageing and related home care;
cellular and tissue engineering;
nanotechnology impact in medicine;
ethical problems linked to progress in bioengineering;
health costs: effectiveness of high technology medicine, is it needed?
public awareness of science and technology: understanding by policy makers, press and public of contributions of science and engineering to health care.

Inter-Union collaboration

The numerous personal contacts we established were very important, identifying immediately a number of fields of common interest with some other Unions. Inter-Union collaboration is encouraged by a 'Joint Grant' system. Collaboration with two other Unions, the IUPS (International Union of Physiological Sciences) and URSI (International Union of the Radio Science) was established during the meeting on projects that might result in IUPESM's first joint grant applications to ICSU.

Liaison Officer

It was suggested that each Union appoints a Liaison Officer and that ICSU might identify a co-ordinator from its staff, at least, for biosciences. This proposal is being actively considered and use of the ICSU website was encouraged, possibly including a chat room.

Conclusion

A productive meeting, which was especially timely and beneficial to IUPESM so soon after our election into ICSU. We now have a much better knowledge of, at least, a part of the ICSU family and equally importantly the administration. As the new member of the family, it was particularly valuable to gain insights of the other Scientific Unions and, hopefully as IUPESM wishes to be a highly productive, dynamic collaborator, we were able to introduce ourselves fully.

Given 26 independent Unions, there was perhaps inevitably a great deal of self-interest, particularly at the outset, and wide-ranging views of topics of future importance. However, there were issues of common concern. During discussions, several of our proposals were not only well-received but also generated common interest and support, some becoming 'adopted'. These included:

public understanding of science, which is being pursued most actively;
health and wellbeing, which may become an ICSU theme;
balanced (expert) statements under the aegis of ICSU on topics of international concern;
online educational material illustrated by our textbook on medical physics and the encyclopaedia of biomedical engineering and recognised by the offer of inclusion on the ICSU website.
there was also substantial interest in the example of a 'co-laboratory', described by Dov Jaron.

It seems reasonable to conclude that participation in this meeting marked the "coming of age" of IUPESM.

Last-minute information

ICSU Grant Programme 2002

As a consequence of the contacts during the Paris meeting, we have formulated two collaborative grants programmes and submitted them for consideration by ICSU. These are:

developing the physiome project: modelling the lung. This project is in collaboration with IUPS (International Union of Physiological Sciences). It has a very high priority for IUPESM as well as IUPS. Fumihiko Kajiya is directly involved;
bridging the digital divide. This project is in collaboration with URSI (International Union of Radio Science) and reflects the practical experience within IUPESM in implementing telemetry for medical purposes, especially in relation to developing countries.

Additionally, we have been contacted by the Academy of Sciences from Armenia on a project titled "Organisation and Development on the Telemedecine in Armenia" which could be envisaged in the ICSU 2003 Grant Programme.

Block grant

We have received the following letter from Larry Kohler, Executive Director of ICSU:

"Today I am writing to inform you of the ICSU Executive Board's decision regarding the award of the block grant. This decision was made based on a proposal from the Committee for Scientific Planning and Review (CSPR), who met just after the Unions meeting. The CSPR felt a strong need to respond to concerns and requests expressed at the Unions meeting in their discussions on the grants programme, reviews, and new initiatives. They found it particularly necessary to take an immediate action through the grants programme to encourage the significant number of activities underway within the Unions such as those on capacity building, and on other critical issues. The following are the contents of the Executive Board's decision on the block grant: Each of the Member Unions should be awarded a $5,000 grant to be used in any of the five areas allowed in the Grants Programme 2002 (i.e. Science and Technology for Sustainable Development, Capacity Building and Science Education, Science/Policy Interface, Dissemination of Information on Science and Technology, and Emerging Science and Technology - Creation of New Knowledge).

This block grant is to be considered as part of the approval process for the Grants Programme 2002, but it will be awarded immediately upon receipt of a request by the Union and could be used in 2001 and 2002.

Each Union that accepts this block grant is asked to submit a report on the use of the grant as soon as it is used to facilitate assessment of the effectiveness of this "Block Grant" initiative."

The availability of a block grant will be particularly valuable to IUPESM in this early stage of our more direct involvement within the ICSU family. We have requested this grant to pursue an action, proposed previously by Keith Boddy, on improving Public Understanding of Science, including political decision makers and opinion formers especially (but not only) in developing countries. A document to be entitled "Contributions of Physics and Engineering in Health Care" will be written in terms readily understandable by the lay person and to make it available on the IUPESM website and also that of ICSU as well as a hard copy brochure. We would hope to enlist the stature and support of ICSU in targeting key members of government worldwide as recipients of the brochure.