Madan Rehani, PhD
President, IOMP

Are we interacting sufficiently with our stakeholders?

Medical physics is an applied science. Our expertise is utilized for the benefit of the patients by several medical colleagues who obviously become our stakeholders. Be it imaging or radiation therapy colleagues, clinical colleagues from different specialties or students who would be clinicians.  The question arises, are we interacting sufficiently with our stakeholders? In this issue of the newsletter, you will find several examples wherein IOMP has initiated actions with a variety of our stakeholders. IOMP invited International Society of Radiology (ISR) and International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) to the International Conference of Medical Physics (ICMP2019) held at Santiago, Chile on 8-11 Sept 2019. This is in addition to other international organizations with whom we already have active interactions, namely IAEA and WHO/PAHO. Presidents-Elect of ISR and IRPA participated in ICMP2019 and there were joint sessions with them. IOMP has been invited by the Asian Oceanian Congress of Radiology (AOCR) for “AOCR meets IOMP” at its 2020 conference in Kuala Lumpur. A new initiative of IOMP is on the teaching of medical physics to medical and pre-medical students. IOMP in cooperation with Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) of Qatar is organizing a training for students of Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar. Another new initiative of IOMP is to partner with Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) to have joint webinar series along with IAEA. The first such joint webinar shall be held in Jan 2020 and will be announced in coming months. Similar cooperation with other stakeholders is in pipeline.  We encourage our national member organizations to enhance their cooperation with stakeholders.