Today at 9.30 CEST dr Leandro Pecchia will held a seminar on Biomedical Engineering in low-resource settings (LRSs)

The United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals are based on the principle of “leaving no one behind”. In particular, SDG3 focuses on Health and Wellbeing, striving for equitable healthcare access, worldwide. Notwithstanding, the actual situation is still far from being equitable. Although most of the world’s population is treated in low-income countries, only a small oligarchy of high-income countries rules the medical device market, setting and following de facto standards and minimum requirements, which do not take into consideration the scarcity of resources and the harsh conditions of low-resource settings. This mismatch hinders the safe and efficient functioning of medical devices, jeopardizing the life of patients and healthcare workers.

This webinar will give an overview of the ABSPIE Lab experience in Africa, with a specific focus on clinical and biomedical engineering, and ethics.

To attend follow the link below:

https://www.dima.uniroma1.it/dima/archivionotizie/biomedical-engineering-low-resource-settings-lrss 

IFMBE CED is the global chapter of Clinical Engineers and allied professionals dedicated to the advancement of safe and effective medical technology design, deployment and management programs. IFMBE is an NGO in official relation with the WHO.

IFMEB CED launched a webinar series since the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in collaboration with WHO. The goal was to support the global community of clinical engineers in preparing their hospitals to face the progression of pandemic. The first affected shared with other clinical engineers their local experience, and this helped making hospitals more resilient, and saving tens of life. Please find the full repository of all recordings and presentation material here: IFMBE CED-WHO COVID-19 webinars

These seminars on Women on Clinical Engineering are particular dear to us, because the role of CE woman in this pandemic was not sufficiently highlighted. We know that the pandemic has affected woman workers more than their male peers, but we also know that there are lots of positive stories that we like to share. -

We are proud to highlight Warwick contribution in this initiative, with Dr Kallirroi Stavrianou being the Technical Manager/Secretariat of the IFMBE CED.

March 24: Women in Clinical Engineering/Health Technology (HT) Webinars: Women Shaping the Health Tech World

Register here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_UV9P0ToxQl2wYHx9nHxpag

March 25: CED Women in Clinical Engineering/Health Technology (HT) Webinars: Women Addressing Today’s HT Challenges

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Cc_90BpRQKWcu6G-WZnmNA

Tiba Vent team from Kenyatta University (Nairobi, Kenya) will present a mechanical ventilator named Tiba vent.

This group is the winner of the 2020 UN 🇺🇳 Person of the Year Award

This mechanical ventilator was designed, developed and prototyped during the first wave of COVID-19 when the whole world was entering local lockdowns.

A multidisciplinary team comprising biomedical engineers, medical doctors, software and electronic engineers teamed up to create the first ever made patient ventilator in Kenya.

Tiba vent, currently under clinical ventilation, was designed taking into consideration international standards and standards from the Kenya Bureau of standards, as well as the world health organisation’s guidelines.

This webinar presented the team of students from Kenya, as well as the innovative medical device they prototyped.

Dr Leandro Pecchia (University of Warwick, UK) will hold the first webinar of the Quadrilateral collaboration among the Vrije University Brussels, the University of Warwick, the University of Patras, and the University of Ljubljana. The talk will present the multidisciplinary team of the Applied Biomedical Signal Processing Intelligent eHealth Lab, focusing on the different streams of research, spanning from medical device design and regulations to health technology assessment and artificial intelligence.

Organized by the Institute of Biomedical Technology (INBIT), and endorsed by Hellenic Society of Biomedical Technology (ELEVIT), Clinical Engineering Division (CED) and Health Technology Assessment Division (HTAD) of IFMBE.

When: May 11, 2020, Zoom

11:30 AM Greece Topic: HTA of Medical Devices webinar Agenda:

11:30 – 12:00 Introduction on HTA of Medical Devices, Prof. Nicolas Pallikarakis

12:00 – 12:45 Different Approaches for HTA Appraisal of Medical Devices, Ass. Prof. Leandro Pecchia

12:45 – 13:00 Q & A

Recording available here.

12.05.2020, 13-14, Zoom (link below)

Micro-Global Forum sessions on COVID19 set up by WHO (Adriana Velazquez).
We've joined forces with WHO to offer you frequent focused global conversations on key applied topics where the evidence base is shared, reviewed, and applied, particularly to address LMIC emerging needs. The purpose of these micro-forums is to give CEs the management information to pass on to senior stakeholders to showcase what solutions have worked elsewhere.

More information is available on the IFMBE CED website and WHO one.

The main results from the field studies in Sub-Saharan Africa were presented, with a focus on international standards, medical locations and donations of medical devices. No video available, but more information can be found in these articles:

[1] D. Piaggio, D. Medenou, R.C. Houessouvo, L. Pecchia, Donation of Medical Devices in Low-Income Countries: Preliminary Results from Field Studies, in: International Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering, Springer, 2019, pp. 423-427.

[2] L. Di Pietro, D. Piaggio, I. Oronti, A. Maccaro, R.C. Houessouvo, D. Medenou, C. De Maria, L. Pecchia, A. Ahluwalia, A Framework for Assessing Healthcare Facilities in Low-Resource Settings: Field Studies in Benin and Uganda, Journal of Medical and Biological Engineering, (2020) 1-9.

Professor Ratko Magjarević, University of Zagreb

Monday 23rd April, 4 pm, D202 School of Engineering

Speaker: Ratko Magjarević received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1994 from the University of Zagreb. After his appointment in industry at the Institute of Electrical Engineering “Koncar,“ he joined the Electronic Measurement and Biomedical Engineering Group at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. He is full professor teaching several courses in Electronic Instrumentation and Biomedical Engineering. As visiting professor he was teaching at Universities in Dubrovnik, Rijeka, Stuttgart, Trieste, Ljubljana, Madrid and Bogota. His scientific and professional interest is in fields of electronic and biomedical instrumentation, in particular in bioelectric potential analysis and in cardiac pacing, computer modelling of biological systems, in research of new methods for drug delivery based on electropermeabilisation and recently in research in biomedical and health informatics, in particular in research of personalised intelligent health systems and body area networks. Previously serving as the President of International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) 2012-15, he currently holds the office of Vice-President of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine and is the Editor in Chief of the IFMBE Proceedings series published by Springer.

Aim: Moving the paradigm of health from just curing the disease to its prevention and prediction, and by introducing the empowerment of patients into health policies, health care and intensive use of numerous health devices for well –being, diagnostics, monitoring and treatment has entered life and homes of millions all over the world. All these new devices and technologies generated challenges to health care providers in managing the health care system and in managing the data generated by the system and all its parts. In addition to “classical” issues of health technology management, such as technology planning, selection, procurement, inspection, admittance, maintenance, and disposal, new technologies opened a series of considerations on accuracy, security and safety of medical data acquired by new technologies. With the endeavor to build future health systems on Internet of Things (IoT), or more precisely on Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), there is a lot to be agreed and put in order on technological side, as it is also from the legal and ethical point of view.

February 8th 2018, 13:00, Room F105/F106, School of Engineering

Speaker: Rita Stagni is Associate Professor of Biomechanics at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna. Her scientific production presently includes more than 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings. Her research activity, in cooperation with national and international scientific institutions, mainly concerns the application of measurement, modelling and control methods in movement analysis, in both physiological and assisted conditions. Recent research focused on the accurate real-time assessment of motor stability and balance in elderly and pathological subjects, with a particular reference, in the last years, to the maturation of motor control in children. She was member of the Board of the Italian Society of Gait Analysis in Clinic, 3DAHM group of the International Society of Biomechanics, member of the European Society of Biomechanics, and participated in national and international research projects as coordinator for UNIBO

Aim: As one of the so-called geriatric giants is considered, it is evident that falls represent a heavy economic and social burden, leading to a significant reduction in the quality of life in the elderly and/or pathological population. Therefore, it is easy to understand the great interest in the identification of effective methods to identify those at risk and to develop effective clinical / rehabilitative interventions aiming to reduce this risk. Unfortunately, however, extensive research and literature demonstrate how far from simple is this task; based on epidemiological evaluations, the risk of falling has a multifactorial nature, is affected by specific clinical conditions as well as by environmental conditions, potentially differing significantly from one subject to another. Both postural and motor stability are the result of the concurrent action of various functional resources.

In recent years, an increasing attention has been paid to multifactorial assessment, aiming at personalised intervention for the prevention of falls and injuries in the elderly subjects. Moreover, efficient wearable sensors have become available, allowing a constant and non-invasive monitoring of the movement during the activities of daily life. This resulted in the development and proposal of a large number of methods for the quantification of motor stability and the estimation of fall risk. The aim of this lesson is to provide an overview and a critical review of the quantitative tools proposed in recent years and based on the use of magneto-inertial sensors to summarise the advantages and the main limitations for the proper use of these instruments.

February 6^th 2018, 13:00, Room A401, School of Engineering

Speaker: Nicolas Pallikarakis is Emeritus Professor of the University of Patras, Greece; Founder of the Institute of Biomedical Technology (INBIT), Patras, Greece, in 1991; Past Chairman of the HTA Division of the IFMBE; Founding member of EAMBES Fellows; and Elected member of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE). He is one of the creators of the international M.Sc. program in Biomedical Engineering (BME) established in 1989 at the University of Patras, Greece. Prof Pallikarakis has more than 130 publications in international scientific journals and conference proceedings. Coordinator of more than 30 European and Greek R&D projects. In the domain of BME education, he coordinated a number of Erasmus/Tempus projects. The two more recent Curricula Reformation and Harmonisation in the field of Biomedical Engineering (CRH BME) and the European Neighbouring Area (ENA) countries that created four new BME Joint programs in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, based on the core curriculum proposed by the previously mentioned CRH BME project. Last January he has been invited to represent Greece in the Erasmus+ 30 year’s celebration launching event in Brussels and in June 2017, he received one of the 33 Awards given to Erasmus+ participants in a special ceremony at the EU Parliament in Strasburg.

Aim: In his talk, Nicolas Pallikarakis will give a thirty-year overview of the evolution in the domain of Medical Technology and its relationship with Biomedical Engineering Education. He will present the case of a unique European collaboration program in BME and will elaborate the direct and indirect benefits of such a joint effort.