European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics

The European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics (EFOMP) was founded in May 1980 in London to serve as an umbrella organisation representing the national Medical Physics societies in Europe. It took just twenty-seven months from the first initiative, by the Council of the Hospital Physicists' Association (HPA, now the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine) in February 1978, to reach agreement on the formation of the EFOMP. The inaugural meeting took place in London, UK on the 9th of May 1979 and the first President of EFOMP was John Clifton.
EFOMP is a non-profit organisation and aims to foster and coordinate the activities of its national member organisations, encourage exchange and dissemination of professional and scientific information, develop guidelines for education, training and accreditation programmes and to make recommendations on the responsibilities, organisational relationships and roles of medical physicists.
Structure.
The EFOMP organisation has two sections: the European federation of professional societies and a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales. The federation consists of national member organisations (NMOs) representing medical physics in Europe, where only one NMO can represent the corresponding nation. The number of representatives each NMO can send into the council depends on the number of national members. The council is the governing authority of EFOMP and normally meets once a year. The council elects the president and all other members of the board, it is responsible for maintaining the constitution of the federation, it handles all NMO related issues and sets up committees, foundations and other legal and operative bodies to facilitate the aims and purpose of the federation. The officers of the council are the members of the board and the chairpersons of the committees. In order to handle all financial aspects of the federation and its mission and aims the limited company was founded in January 2008. The officers of the board are the directors, the members of the council are the members of the company.
The federation has six permanent committees:
National Member Organisations.
EFOMP is the umbrella organisation for 35 nations, each of which are constituted by one medical physics organisation and each representing together more than 9000 medical physicists and clinical engineers working in the field of medical physics. Each national society has a certain number of delegates in the council, depending on the number of national members: up to 100 memberships result in one delegate, up to 400 entitles to two delegates and a society with 401 or more memberships can have three delegates.
The foundation date specifies the constitution of the earliest national organisation (separate society or division of superordinate organisation) of natural scientists or engineers working in a clinical environment which can be considered the predecessor of the NMO. The affiliation dates represent the earliest memberships of the current member nations (or its predecessor, e.g. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia) represented by a society.
European Affairs.
Several projects at European level with impact on medical physics matters and legislation have been undertaken.
One of the most important was the transposition of the Basic Safety Standards (BSS) Directive (Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom). After the BSS was brought into force in 2014, EFOMP headed a European consortium with the task to merge current scientific, technological and operational knowledge and experience with the consolidation of different directives and recommendations in the field of radiation protection. The objective of this project was to evaluate Member States‘ activities for the transposition and implementation of Council Directive in the medical area. In addition an exchange of initial experiences and resolutions was coordinated in order to identify good practices.
MEDIRAD, is one of the current projects EFOMP is involved in during its preparation phase started by the European Union in 2017 dealing with implications of medical low dose radiation exposure. EFOMP is in the advisory panel of the project and participates in work package six in order to formulate policy recommendations for the effective protection of patients and medical workers and the general public.
Education and Training.
The EFOMP School for Medical Physics Experts (ESMPE) organizes medical physics education and training events specifically targeted to Medical Physicists who are already Medical Physics Experts (MPEs) or would like to achieve Medical Physics Expert status. Several editions were organised jointly with COCIR driven by the need for a closer cooperation between manufacturers and medical physicists to increase the awareness of features of medical devices related to imaging, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine. In 2019, EFOMP launched an e-learning platform, where pdfs and video recordings of the lectures given during the EFOMP school editions have been made available.
The main target of EFOMP is the harmonization of Medical Physics education and training standards throughout Europe. For this purpose, two elements have been implemented:
Science.
Included in the scope of the federation is to coordinate scientific activities and to support the development of guidelines and directives. A number of Working groups are operating for a specific time period to create quality control protocols, guidance documents, harmonise practices update core curricula.
Between 1987 and 2014, EFOMP has collaborated with national organisations in holding regular European Conferences of Medical Physics.
1987: Innsbruck, 1990: Oxford, 1993: Tenerife, 1995: Wurzburg (Röntgen Centenary), 1996: Trieste, 1999: Patras, 2001: Belfast, 2003: Eindhoven, 2005: Nuremberg, 2007: Pisa; 2008: Krakow, 2009: Munich: 2011: Dublin, 2012: Sofia, 2013: Brighton, 2014: Athens. Every two years since 2016, EFOMP organizes the European Congress of Medical Physics (ECMP) on his own. The first congress took place in Athens (2016) and the second one in Copenhagen (2018).The 3rd ECMP will take place in Torino (2020) and the 4th in Dublin (2022).
Since 2007, Physica Medica the European Journal of Medical Physics (EJMP), is the official scientific journal of the organisation. The owner of the journal is the Italian Association of Medical Physics (AIFM) and it is also the official organ of the French (SFPM), Irish (IAPM), Czech Republic (CAMP) and Hellenic (HAMP) Societies of Medical Physics. In 2019, EJMP has become official publication of the International Organization for Medical Physics (IOMP). Every month a volume is published. According to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) the current Impact Factor is 2.532 (2018).
There are three other scientific journals that EFOMP is associated with:
EFOMP publishes a quarterly electronic newsletter called the European Medical Physics News (EMPnews)
Co-operation.
EFOMP created an international network of relationships with other stakeholders in the field of physical science applied to healthcare.
Collaborations:* regional organisation member of the International Organization for Medical Physics (IOMP)
Memoranda of Understanding:
External links.
Official Website of EFOMP