History
The Swedish Society for Medical Engineering
and Physics MTF is working in the fields of medical physics, biomedical
engineering and biophysics. The society was first founded in 1956 and it
was called at that time "The Swedish Society for Medical Physics and
Medical Engineering". The society was also affiliated to the Royal
Swedish Society of Medicine in 1956 and hence, MTF is one of the oldest
sections of it. In the beginning the members of MTF had technological,
medical or scientific background and their main interest was in the
fields of research and higher education. In 1971 a subdivision, "The
Division of Engineering in Health Care" was founded to meet the demands,
not only from the persons who were working with clinical engineering at
the hospitals and engineers from industry manufacturing biomedical
equipment, but also from the medical doctors working with biomedical
equipment in their every day life. Since the activities of these two
groups within the main society served the same purpose the annual
meetings 1981 decided, that the groups should join together and
establish a mutual society with the present name.
The society started to act in the new form in 1982 and has today about
850 members. Most of the members, about 70% are working with biomedical
and clinical engineering issues in hospitals. About 10% of the members
are employed by universities and therefore involved with education of
graduate students in biomedical engineering. However, even the clinical
engineers at the hospitals participate in education of students and give
education of nurses and other health care staff in biomedical and
clinical engineering. Almost all of the members employed by universities
work with own research projects in several fields of biomedical
engineering. In Sweden there are a great number of companies, which are
working with biomedical engineering. Some are small and others larger,
but only approx. 15% of the MTF members are employed by these companies.
Very often these members have a past within the clinical engineering
departments at the hospitals, but they might also have been student
members
The goals of MTF are
-
to support and encourage the scientific development and education
within the areas of interest
-
to arrange seminars and meetings on actual topics. - to work for
clinical engineering in health care, that is well adapted to its
purpose and is of high quality
-
to work for exchange of experience and co-operation between the
members
-
to work actively for increased competence and educational level of
the clinical staff concerned and for increased safety for the
patients and personnel
-
the society acts actively in standardisation of Medical devices and
equipment through members who are working in several national and
international standardisation committees and it acts as a body to
which proposed standards and official reports are referred for
consideration
HIGHLIGHTS
OF ACTIVITIES
Courses
MTF arranges several post graduate courses
during each term. Some of these courses are recurrent like "Medicine for
Engineers" and some are arranged only once, often required by new laws
and regulations or new technologies, but also the members can propose
topics for a course. Most of the courses are organised by the members at
their hospitals or at the local universities. Often the lecturers come
from the same organisation, a fact that will hold the costs of the
course low. As an example of recent courses can be mentioned
"multimedia", "Ultrasound Technology" and "Legal Consequences of the
Responsibility for the Medical Equipment in Health Care". The courses
are very important source of income for the society.
Meetings
The Society arranges different national
meetings and symposia. One appreciated meeting has been the "Biomedical
Engineering Day", during which special technologies has been presented
and discussed. In the past there have been topics like laser technology,
biomagnetism and thermo therapy. MTF's program deals with actual issues
in the clinical engineering for example Quality Assurance (QA), Quality
Audit and accreditation of hospital laboratories. MTF has also arranged
a larger meeting in QA few years ago in order to elucidate the specific
issues of the QA in biomedical and clinical engineering.
Annual
Meeting
The Annual Meeting of the society is held in Stockholm in late November
or in early December in connection to the Annual conference of the Royal
Swedish Society of Medicine. This conference is a four-day arrangement
with oral and poster sessions and the largest medical fair in Sweden. At
the MTF annual meeting the society awards some person who has achieved
distinguished research work or major development projects in biomedical
engineering or medical physics. The amount of this award, the Erna
Ebeling prize has been during the last few years slightly more than SEK
30 000. In the connection to the Annual Meeting a session is arranged
with presentation of scientific papers and technical reports from a
variety of biomedical fields. Following topics has been covered
recently: construction of ectomographic gamma camera system, optical
trans illumination for mammography with non ionising radiation, X-ray
radiography using laser produced plasma, spectral analysis of heart rate
variability, estimation of leakage flow through heart valves, hyper
thermal treatment and decision support in respiratory treatment.
Sometimes even symposia are arranged to cover more thoroughly topics of
interest, for example a symposia with title "Economic control and
clinical engineering - for or against a cost effective health care
system".
Certification
The Annual Meeting approved in 1993 a proposal according to which
members have possibility to apply for Certification in Clinical or
Biomedical Engineering and this process was started in September 1994.
The aim of this procedure is to provide for:
-
the
patient's demands of controlled and safe medical equipment
-
the
health care system's needs of well-defined competence
-
the
individual engineer that the health care system makes the best use
of his competence.
Each application to become a Certified
Clinical or Biomedical Engineer will be assessed by an Accreditation
Panel. This panel will place considerable emphasis on checking that the
candidate has not only the formal education, but also a competence,
which is well in accordance with the aims of this procedure. Since the
certification started more than 200 engineers have been certified.
ACTIVITIES
IN THE FIELD OF STANDARDISATION AND CONTACTS WITH AUTHORITIES
SIS, Swedish standards institute represents Sweden in ISO
and CEN in matters dealing with standardisation of equipment, material
and use of equipment and material in health care and medical services.
SIS has the purpose to look after the field of standardisation together
with Swedish experts to pursue the Swedish interests in the
international standardisation work. A number of technical committees and
working groups are working within SIS in purpose to work out proposals
to Swedish standards and to review the proposals for international
standards. MTF is represented in these committees and working groups. In
this way the society takes part in the European and international
standardisation work. MTF is also included in the group of reviewing
organisations so that even a larger number of society members can judge
the proposals. It is not only the SIS, which organises the
standardisation work in Sweden. SEK, the Swedish Electrical Committee
has a working group that works with the electromedical equipment. The
society has good relations to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs,
the National Board of Health and Welfare and the Medical product agency,
which makes it possible to discuss important matters of the fields of
activity with key-persons. These authorities use the society as a
reviewing organisation when new laws and ordinances that affect the
fields of biomedical and clinical engineering or medical physics are to
be established. In judging accidents or near accidents the National
Board of Health and Welfare often consults the society with its
expertise. However, it is important that this type of events is reported
so that colleagues will be informed of them. Therefore the society
developed in 1993 a database which aim was to swiftly inform engineers
and clinical staff of adverse events in order to prevent reoccurrence.
The information is unidentified in order to make sure that personnel
involved in the event not are punished or will experience any
difficulties for informing colleagues of the event. The database is free
for anyone and can be found via
www.reidar.se.
International
activitys
The engagement of MTF in international co-operation is
formalised through the International Federation for Medical and
Biological Engineering, IFMBE (http://www.ipem.ac.uk/ifmbe_ngen_public/).
The Federation now has about 120,000 members
in 58 affiliated organizations around the world. Presently MTF
has three representatives actively participating in the work of IFMBE in
the Administrative Council and in the Clinical Engineering Division (CED).
The CED works to
promote collaboration between individual Clinical
Engineers in hospitals, institutions and Clinical Engineering societies
in different countries. This collaboration covers for example
development of technical and professional guidelines within the clinical
engineering field in order to improve the capacity and quality of the
healthcare delivery for improved patient safety.
MTF has hosted the Nordic Meeting on Medical and
Biological Engineering twice, 1981 and 1993. This meeting has the status
of IFMBE regional meeting. The meeting in 1981 was the 5th of
these meetings and it was held in Linköping. The 9th Nordic
Meeting on Medical and Biological Engineering, was arranged in Lund.
During this meeting the Administrative Council of IFMBE had its ordinary
meeting and in connection to this also a meeting with representatives
from the Baltic countries was held. They were invited to present the
situation in their countries on clinical engineering in the hospitals
and biomedical engineering education and research. One year after the
Lund meeting a biomedical engineering society was founded in Estonia and
a couple of years later even in Lithuania and Latvia. This positive
development in the Baltic countries is reflected by the new name of the
meeting that was adopted for the Nordic Meeting in Tampere, Finland in
1996 - "The 10th Nordic Baltic Conference on Biomedical
Engineering". After the 11th Conference, which was held in
Tallinn in 1999 “Medical Physics” was added to the name to reflect the
broadness of the themes covered in the Conference. The 13th
NBC on Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics was held in Umeå in
2005 with more that 200 participants from 35 different countries.
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