AC Meeting in Seoul
September 10-11, 1999
It is always exciting to see new countries, experience new cultures and meet new people. This was my first visit to Korea and Seoul, a city of 11 million inhabitants with almost as many cars as people. At least I felt it when watching the traffic. The Administrative Council has had meetings in Europe the last couple of years and that is why this meeing was arranged in connection with the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering. In this way, our friends from this region did not have to travel so far. And friends is what they are - you make new friends every time you have a meeting somewhere. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to Professor Sun I. Kim for all the help he gave me in organising the AC meeting in Seoul.
11 AC members out of 13 joined the meeting, which started on the morning of September 10. Even the chairpersons of the committees, divisions and working groups were invited, but unfortunately only two representatives came. However, some of the invited chairpersons did send a report.
One very exciting effort that IFMBE has been involved in during this year through IUPESM is the mission to get full membership in ICSU. Jean-Pierre Morucci explained very thoroughly the results of the efforts made in this connection. He sketched the background to the actions and pointed out that Keith Boddy and Gary Fullerton have played a very important role in this mission. IUPESM received support letters from 10 international unions and from 16 national members, and the final decision on full membership of ICSU was made at the ICSU General Assembly in Cairo at the end of September. Now that we have the result, we can proudly say that IUPESM was accorded full membership by a unanimous vote in Cairo.
Via the secretariat, I reported that the new 1999 Directory is available on the IFMBE web site. The 98 Directory was printed in August 1998 and delivered to the National Societies in the course of September 1998. The reason for this late printing date was the delay in receiving updated information from the societies. Only two weeks after the delivery, I received the first notice of errors in the Directory. The societies do not inform the secrtariat of the changes of their addresses and names of officers. (Only Iceland and Portugal have acted without being specially requested to do so.) I have sent a reminder to the secretaries of the national societies about their responsibilities and I hope that more than two countries will react.
The homepage was moved from Amsterdam to Sweden in March 1999. There is a link from the old address to the new one, which is www.ifmbe.org. This time, the Federation Web is not under the IUPESM Web as it was earlier. There are, of course, links to IUPESM and IOMP from our wesite. We discussed the development of the homepage during the AC meeting and decided that the project will be defined properly and professionals will do the work.
It is gratifying to note that there is interest in IFMBE membership. One new application for membership was presented at the meeting. This application came from Ireland and was handed over to the Constitution & Bye-Laws committee for consideration. Additionally, the Yugoslavian application is under consideration and a few days ago we received a membership application from Latvia.
Helmut Hutten pointed out that we should try to help member societies to organise events and education within the biomedical engineering communities of their respective countries. In several European countries, there are smaller groups within biomedical and clinical engineering that should be brought together.
Jean-Pierre Morucci gave a short report of the Nordic-Baltic conference in Tallinn and told us that the next Nordic-Baltic conference will be held in Reykjavik in Iceland in 2002. He also pointed out that it is necessary for the AC to have a liaison person present at all conferences where the IFMBE is involved. We decided that Joachim Nagel will be the liaison person for Medicon 2001 in Croatia, Joe Barbenel for the ESEM conference in Belfast in Ireland in 2001, Fernando Infantosi for the Latin-American conference in Cuba in 2001 and myself for the Nordic-Baltic meeting in Iceland in 2002.
Alan Murray reported not only on the work of the Federation Journal Committee but also on the work he does as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal. He noted that the number of submitted papers had increased by 20% in 1998 and the impact factor has improved from 0.54 in 1996 to 0.86 in 1998. These figures are good, but the number of subscribers has decreased in total by 83 from 828 to 745. The Journal is very important to the Federation and I would like to ask everybody to promote the Journal in the Societies, Universities and Hospitals.
During the General Assembly in Nice 1997, an ad-hoc working group with the title Women in MBE was established at Jan Persson's initiative with Janie Fouke as the chairperson. The work of this group was discussed at the AC meeting and Janie Fouke was asked to identify prominent and senior female researchers. She will contact the National Societies and ask the secretaries to give some names so that, for example, more females can be elected to the AC. The Editorial Board also welcomes female members. Janie Fouke will discuss this in greater depth with Jean-Pierre Morucci and Jan Persson. It was also pointed out that the main reason for the lack of female bioengineers is that there are very few female bioengineering students. At the next World Congress in Chicago, Jan Persson will be asked to be a key speaker in the symposium concerning this issue.
Unfortunately there was no report available from the Clinical Engineering Division. Everybody felt that this division and its work is an important part of the Federation's working field. As there were some other issues that we did not have time to discuss in sufficient depth, Jean-Pierre Morucci proposed that an extended officers' meeting be held in Vienna in connection with the EMBEC'99 conference from 4-7 November. All AC members plus committee and working group chairmen are invited to attend this meeting.
Although this new meeting will increase my work load, I feel that it is more fruitful to meet and discuss in person than try to conduct meetings by e-mail. We had two very intense meeting days in Seoul, both of which lasted from nine in the morning until half past six in the evening. Discussions continued during the four days of the conference, which had its own song called "We Are All Friends". This was certainly something one felt during those days in Seoul, and the tune still evokes pleasant memories when I play the theme on my piano at home.
Heikki Teriö
Secretary General