Biomedical Engineering in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the proper step into future

Abstract

Knowledge and skills behind medical technology are one of the fastest growing areas at the beginning of this century. Development and induction of contemporary medical equipment into health care significantly changed the way of providing medical services. Modern health care intends to cover not only the “classical” methods of health treatment like diagnostic, therapy, rehabilitation and long-term care, but tends to emphasize prevention and even prediction of diseases. Today, medical technology is essential and unavoidable for each and every effort to ensure health and well-being of the population. Everywhere in the world, but especially in Europe, there is an increase of chronic non-communicable diseases partially due to aging of the population and partially due to change of lifestyle to sedentary or only lightly active, bad nutrition habits and increased level of stress. However, these new and increased needs of the population became generators of the economy, so that e.g. in the USA, “employment of biomedical engineers is projected to grow 27 percent from 2012 to 2022, much faster than the average for all occupations” [1].
Biomedical Engineering significantly contributed to fundamental knowledge in engineering fields, but also in fields of medicine and biology [2]. Their basic professional duty is to explore how to transfer scientific results into daily health care in clinical settings and at home. By using the systematic engineering approach and specific knowledge, biomedical engineers have to participate in building and integrating the universal health system and they have to be included in relevant decisions making with regard to the implementation, use and care of the new technologies. Research and development in the field of medical technology in directed to finding optimal solutions for social priorities, which can be easily notices in the European Union programs Horizon 2020 and Health 2020 [3, 4] where health research budget is the largest, 25% of the budget aimed for societal challenges.
In Europe, there are more than 300 universities having programs with content in biomedical engineering [5]. The profession “biomedical engineer” is a registered profession in many countries and in those where it is not an registered professions, biomedical engineers are considered to work in an interdisciplinary area.
Data presented in previous two paragraphs concurs with the fact that the 1st Conference of Medical and Biological Engineering in Bosnia and Herzegovina (CMBEBIH 2015) [6] held in Sarajevo from 13th to 15th March 2015 raised tremendous interest of the scientific and wider community in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the region. The organizers, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Medical and Biological Engineering Society, indeed succeeded in their endeavor to “Expand your (own) horizons through biomedical engineering”. With more than 500 participants for the first edition of a conference, the Conference cannot be declared other than a great success! In this issue of the Journal, the readers will have a chance to get an overview of rich choice of contents presented under different themes and topics of the conference: biomedical signal processing, biomedical imaging and image processing, biosensors and bioinstrumentation, bio-micro/nano technologies, biomaterials, biomechanics, robotics and minimally invasive surgery, cardiovascular, respiratory and endocrine systems engineering, neural and rehabilitation engineering, molecular, cellular and tissue engineering, bioinformatics and computational biology, clinical engineering and health technology assessment, health informatics, e-health and telemedicine, biomedical engineering education and pharmaceutical engineering.
The 1st Conference of Medical and Biological Engineering in Bosnia and Herzegovina is endorsed by the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) [7], the largest society based biomedical engineering organization in the world. IFMBE was founded in Paris in 1959 under the auspices of UNESCO. The Bosnia and Herzegovina Medical and Biological Engineering Society has already established contacts with the IFMBE and has an observer status.
I strongly believe that the 1st Conference of Medical and Biological Engineering in Bosnia and Herzegovina has given a large thrust to development of biomedical engineering as a profession and as a scientific field and that the Bosnia and Herzegovina Medical and Biological Engineering Society will find its place in the rich international collaboration in the field. I think that I can say on behalf of the participants of the 1st Conference that we all are looking forward to the second edition of the Conference.