Message from the IUPESM President

Dear IFMBE colleagues

It is an honour and a privilege to serve as President of IUPESM and I hope this presentation will keep you informed of the projects of our Union and, perhaps, will motivate you to become more involved. To work between 1997 and 2000 with Keith Boddy and Gary Fullerton was very fruitful and pleasant. I am conscious of the challenge to take the succession of "mon ami Keith". I am so happy to work with him, now Past-President, and to continue to have the energetic and innovative support of the Secretary-General Gary Fullerton.   

All the progress during these past three years has been possible thanks to the excellent support of the Officers and Council Members as well as other members of IUPESM and I hope the new team will continue this tradition of collaboration and friendship.   

Officers of the Council

President - Jean-Pierre Morucci
Vice-President - Colin Orton
Past-President - Keith Boddy
Secretary-General - Gary Fullerton
Treasurer - Gary Fullerton
Ordinary Members of the Council

IFMBE President - Dov Jaron
IOMP President - Oskar Chomicki
IFMBE Vice-President - Joachim Nagel
IOMP Vice-President - Azam Niroomand-Rad
IFMBE Secretary-General - Heikki Terio

Ordinary
Members-at-Large

Inger-Lena Lamm (IOMP)
Kwan-Hoong Ng (IOMP)
Takeyoshi Dohi (IFMBE)
Helmut Hutten (IFMBE)

 

See box for the new team.

During the General Assembly, as IFMBE and IOMP were confident that their memberships would endorse the continued existence of IUPESM, President Boddy requested a consensus motion from the Presidents of both the IOMP and IFMBE concerning the future of IUPESM. The Presidents and Vice-Presidents moved and seconded the following motion:

"That, having been admitted to ICSU as a Full Member, having received reaffirmation of support from IFMBE and IOMP, the IUPESM General Assembly authorises the Council to take actions necessary to further this new international status and that the present IUPESM level of co-operation be continued and that IOMP and IFMBE continue the practice of holding combined world congresses at three-year intervals".

This motion was approved unanimously. As a result of this additions to the bylaws of the IUPESM for creating new committees were approved by the Assembly. Based on this decision the committee structure of IUPESM is as follows:

Standing Committees

  • Congress Organizing Committee (Dov Jaron – Chair, Colin Orton, Gary Fullerton, Tokeyoshi Dohi and Didier Geiger)
  • Nominating Committee (Keith Boddy – Chair, Jean-Pierre Morucci, Banu Onaral, Antonio Fernando Catelli Infantosi, Jack Cunningham)
  • Awards Committee (Colin Orton – Chair, Zibin Yang, Fridtjof Nuesslin, Joachim Nagel)

Ad-Hoc Committees

Developing Countries Committee, relates to corresponding Committees of IFMBE and IOMP

New Committees

  • ICSU Liaison Committee (Jean-Pierre Morucci – Chair, Keith Boddy, Niilo Saranummi, Fumihiko Kajiya, Hideo Ohashi, Nandor Richter, Peter Inia, Carri Borras, Medan Rehani, Dov Jaron, Oskar Chomicki, Azam Niroomand-Rad and Joachim Nagel).
  • Training and Education Committee (Colin Orton – Chair, Helmut Hutten, Oskar Chomicki, Azam Niroomand-Rad, Hideo Okashi, Pieter Inea, Slavik Tabakov, Joachim Nagel and Nicholas Pallikarakis)
  • Regional Development Committee (Helmut Hutten – Chair, Oskar Chomicki, Dan Adam, Mladen Poluta , Myoung Ho Lee, Cari Borras, Medan Rehani)
  • Public and International Relations Committee (Fumihiko Kajiya – Chair, Takeyoshi Dohi, Keith Boddy, Pedro Andreo, Inger-Lena Lamm, Heikki Terio )

The agreed functions of the new committees are shown on the IUPESM site (www.iupesm.org).   

For all these committees, ex-officio appointments have been proposed to match people from IFMBE and IOMP and to better tie the respective efforts of each organisation to IUPESM in order to strengthen the ability to achieve our ambitious objectives laid out in the IUPESM statutes. We need to specify exactly what we are seeking for IUPESM to achieve in future and identify what IFMBE and IOMP have in common for truly joint ventures.   

The Administrative Council in Chicago has taken the opportunity to mix new members of the Council with the "ancients" in the different committees. It is a very nice tradition that all the "ancients" accept not to totally leave the Union.

In Nice, the Union established five Key Programmes:

  1. Public and Governmental Understanding of Health Sciences
  2. Education, Training and Continued Professional Development for the 21st Century
  3. Global Biomedical Information Networking for Developing Countries, for which a global online medical physics textbook and a biomedical engineering encyclopaedia are being developed
  4. Evidence-Based Health Technology
  5. Medical Equipment Evaluation.

Progress on these programmes and updated proposals from Chicago are also reported on our homepage.

I believe that we need to decide on long-range goals and set priorities first. Clearly, our resources are quite limited and we should focus our activities in those directions that can provide maximum benefits and in which we can be most effective. The dramatic impact of the new technologies on the distribution of information is being particularly felt in science, where many of the innovations, such as the world wide web, were initiated. The new developments provide enormous potential benefits for the scientific information chain and hence for the progress of science.   

As a full member of the International Council for Science since September 1999, we must be able to integrate our own programmes, which are complementary to and symbiotic with those of ICSU, in order to create a strong collaboration with the members of the ICSU family. Symbiosis of the highest quality is vital if we are to achieve the full potential of our new status. We have the opportunity, within the International Council for Science, to make contributions to the exploitation of the physical and engineering sciences in medicine for the benefit of patients and people with disabilities world-wide and especially in developing countries. To do so is a major challenge in which we must succeed. Now the real work begins in ensuring that IUPESM is an effective and influential partner within ICSU.   

We are proposing and seeking collaboration with COSTED, INASP and PCBS, from which Keith Boddy received a very positive and encouraging feedback in 1999.

Committee on Science and Technology in Developing Countries (COSTED)   

The main purpose of COSTED is to stimulate and facilitate participation of developing countries’ scientists and scientific institutions in the activities of international science and technology. COSTED helps generate international programmes and projects that increase the scientific and technological capacity of developing countries and which address problems relevant to their cultural and socio-economic development.

Program for Capacity Building in Science (PCBS).   

The activities of this programme focus on the promotion of science education, beginning at the primary level, the promotion of the public understanding of science, and reducing the isolation of scientists.

International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP)  

INASP is a programme of the Committee of Scientific Information of ICSU. An international directory (INASP-Health; Directory 1999) of organisations working to improve access to reliable information for healthcare workers in developing and transitional countries is available. INASP-Health Services include: 1) an advisory and referral network 2) a health information forum 3) a needs and provision database (INASP health) that welcomes (free of charge) all those who are willing to share their experience and expertise with others to improve access to reliable information.

The other collaborations that may be available through ICSU include UNESCO, WHO, IAEA, EU and National Academies. IUPESM needs to approach the National Science Academies to initiate a dialogue of the standing of biomedical engineers and medical physicists in the respective Academies among their members and to ensure the recognition of our disciplines as scientific disciplines. The goal is to get our field recognised also at the national level in the Academies as it is the case in some countries. To establish and conduct such a dialogue, we might also consider asking and/or convincing the National Academies to appoint a liaison person.   

To conclude, I have the fascinating challenge to be the President of this Union until the next world congress in Sydney in 2003 and I am well aware of the importance and difficulty in steering such an international organisation. I will do my best to prove worthy of your confidence for the coming three years, to meet your expectations and to help, support and facilitate the tasks and the missions of the different committees. To lead and monitor these ongoing activities during the coming three years, the chairmen and members of the Council and Committees need your help, your statements and your advertisements. Please do not hesitate to contact them, as we need your input. I will try to continue to vitalise IUPESM as a more authoritative, self-sufficient and meaningful organisation. IUPESM can act as a highly effective and dynamic leader in relations with ICSU and other major international unions or bodies.


Jean-Pierre Morucci
President IUPESM
Email: morucci@cict.fr