The tenth anniversary of the National Biomedical and Clinical Engineering Conference was celebrated at the NEC in Birmingham with the theme "Convergence of Technologies - Past, Present and Future." The conference was sponsored by Philips Medical Systems, who mounted a display of historic equipment to mark the occasion. In addition, a new website (www.nationalbiomedconference.co.uk) was launched for the conference .
A session was also devoted to training and in particular the National Occupational Standards for Medical Engineering. On the clinical side Ken Spearpoint, nurse consultant in resuscitation at Hammersmith Hospital, brought the meeting up to date with the new guidelines for resuscitation. Teresa Dunn of the Bath Institute of Medical Engineering spoke on drug error reduction systems. John Hailstone, healthcare solutions advisor, Fujitsu Services, expanded on the NHS Connecting for Health programme with “Making the connection: from measurement to NHS care record”.
The meeting concluded with Dr Tom Clutton-Brock, senior lecturer and head of department, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at Birmingham University taking a look into the future.
