Towards a European Framework for Education and Training in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering

Mutual recognition of professionals is a pre-requisite for the fulfillment of European Union policies concerning the free movement of professionals. The two associated fields of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Medical Physics (MP) are rapidly evolving and diversifying while the accelerated development of medical informatics, telematics and microelectronics, approached by both physics and engineering, have resulted in extended grey areas around the two profession boundaries. Competency-based education, training, assessment and accreditation of medical physicists and biomedical engineers share not only common principles, but also a certain number of common competencies. These issues have been negotiated, in this volume, by transnational professional bodies and also by TEMPERE - a European thematic network of 40 universities under the SOCRATES EU programme - which has contributed a broadly accepted proposal for mutual co-operation and recognition in the above fields.