Biomedical Engineering in France: A Brief Historical SurveyThe emergence of Biomedical Engineering in France was due, as with most new and multidisciplinary fields, to leading researchers belonging to other areas. Physics and Chemistry were the most responsible because Engineering Science e.g. Signal Processing were, at that time, in their infancy in France. These individuals along with some students were isolated in their original laboratories where very few inter-departmental meetings took place. The research in this area suffers from an image of being an "applied research", as opposed to the "lettres de noblesse" of Basic Sciences. Furthermore, the discipline has always related to industrial concerns, backed by private funding, two features which, in France, have made BME less appealing. To put this into context, it must be said that the means of communication between researches was limited to a very small number of journals (the first journal founded 50 years ago was the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering) which were disseminated very sparsely over the world. It was often months before an individual could obtain a copy of a given paper. A real interest appeared in the 60's for "medical instrumentation" or "medical electronics" and it was only at the beginning of the 70's that the national institutions initiated several programs in the area. Three leading researchers have played a major role at this level.. The General Director of the INSERM (the National Institute for Health and Medical Research), Professor C BURG, the French rep-resentative to the European BME Working Group, Professor D LAURENT, and the head of the national programme, Y MOSCHETTO, Director of Research. The first comparative report prepared by D LAURENT at European level pointed out that France was a long way behind other countries such as Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom which were already engaged in strong national policies supporting industrial efforts and establishing Institutes fully devoted to research and training in BME. This realisation helped to initiate the following: (1) a national evaluation of the French human potential involved in BME was launched; (2) a coordination for investment was initiated; (3) the creation of BME laboratories was decided upon. The INSERM, under the leadership of C BURG and Y MOSCHETTO, played a major role in the 1970's by setting up several research units and what was called "Centres of Biomedical Tech-nology" around the country. Most of them were successful, attracting and recruiting young engineers and researchers, making joint ventures with companies and developing new products. In the 80's, the General Direction for Scientific and Technological Research (having given support to the field since the early 1960's) with J-C BISCONTE, under the Ministry of Research, set up regional centres, co-financed by Regions. Alongside this, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), together with universities and engineering schools, founded various laboratories focussed in BME research. Beyond the institutional support, individual initiatives led to a greater awareness of BME. Y MOSCHETTO created the French journal, "Innovation and Technology in Biology and Medicine" (ITBM – jean ROUSSEAU) and the "Young Researchers Forum". A second jour-nal, RBM, oriented toward Clinical Engineering, was established around the same time. They have recently merged and are published today by Elsevier. These instruments, structuring the national community, have had a strong impact on the European visibility of the French BME. J-P MORUCCI and other colleagues strongly pushed for European initiatives like the COST actions, the AIM and the BIOMED programs. Friendly partnerships were established with the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) and a strong increase of French contributions were observed in all the IEEE-EMBS Conferences. This situation offered the opportunity for J-L COATRIEUX and J-P MORUCCI to lead the 1992 IEEE EMBS Conference in Paris (the first time it was ever held outside the US). Its great success paved the way for the conference to be held in the various cities around the globe. Unfortunately, the INSERM decided, under pressure from more fundamental disciplines, in the early 90's to reduce its support of BME by closing several research units while the CNRS and the CEA ("Atomic Energy Agency") maintained their efforts at a moderate level. A new player, the INRIA (National Institute for Computer Science and Automatic Control) came into the field by launching several research projects. Technology was also considered as a marginal component of research in the INSERM: the famous "citation index" was the law. BME was scattered over medical disciplines and lost its identity. This made it incredibly difficult to recruit young researchers and to establish new laboratories. The paradox of this period is that the international recognition was very high, especially by the north-American community with the election as of J-L COATRIEUX as Vice-President of IEEE-EMBS, followed later by the election of C ROUX as President. At the same time, Small and Medium Size Enterprises, with products in very focussed BME market segments, were growing. It was only in 1998 that a new BME initiative of the Ministry of Research and Technology, directed by G BERGER, was introduced. It allowed J DEMONGEOT and J-L COATRIEUX to launch the National Health Technology Network in 1999. The annual Calls for Projects (the 2003 Call is already open under the responsibility of R BEUSCART and J BITTOUN) were aimed at multidisciplinary research (from Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, etc.) in joint ventures with companies. The last 4 years have been used to restructure the tissue of French BME organisations. The French BME Society (SFGBM with L POURCELOT as first President) was launched in 1999. The Alliance for BME (AGBM), headed by F LANGEVIN, was reactivated: it merged the SFGBM, the federations of Companies and Technology Transfer Centres, the French Clinical Engineering Society and many others. The leading role of the Ministry of Research and Technology has, in turn, allowed a new national label for research units (ERIT-M) especially suited to BME. The new General Director of INSERM, C BRECHOT, decided upon the creation of a new INSERM scientific commission, STAM (Science for Technologies Applied to Medicine). The emphasis is on multidisciplinary fields in the CNRS (now directed by G BERGER) which has painted a confident picture of the future of BME in France at the frontiers of Information Technology, Society and Health. The 6 th European Program, with its new instruments, the Networks of Excellence and the Integrated Projects, must surely be a new and significant step for our field.
Jean-Yves Boire
Frederique Frouin
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