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Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BioMEP (Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics)

Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2022-02-28

The global and EU healthcare sector is facing massive challenges due to the ageing population and growing burden of various diseases. To meet the economic and health challenges in the society, a move from treatment of symptoms towards early diagnosis and prevention is a necessity. There is certainly a demand for innovative technological solutions for health and wellbeing. The health technology is an industrial sector with one of the highest percentages of R&D personnel with research education. Multi- and cross-disciplinary knowledge and internationalization are strongly emphasized in health technology industry. It comes as no surprise, then, that the demand for highly educated biomedical engineering (BME) experts has increased tremendously over the past few years.

The BioMEP mission was improve the welfare of the society through improvements in healthcare and supporting the strong industry sector of medical technology. The objective of BioMEP was fulfil the demand for highly qualified biomedical engineers and medical physicists addressing the needs of academic, healthcare and industry sector, and thus to meet the increasing demands of the European labour market.

To achieve its objective our research and training programme revolved around three core essential issues:
• Early intervention in preventing diseases with highest burden on our society.
• The need for multi-disciplinary collaboration to approach health issues concurrently from different perspectives (engineering, medicine, physics) in order to create medical technology developments.
• The need for highly qualified experts to translate their research findings into innovative products for the healthcare and medical technology sectors.

During the programme period, BioMEP trained 15 biomedical engineering and medical physics experts from which 8 completed their PhD degrees and the rest are estimated to graduate during the year 2022.
1. Management

The Steering Committee (SC) was responsible for strategic decisions concerning the programme. SC was comprised of representatives from each partner institution, the coordinator, the director of the programme and one representative of the ESRs. The SC meetings were arranged to evaluate the status of the doctoral programme and address matters raised by partners or by ESRs.

The quality of the career guidance has been ensured by applying the same standardized supervision and monitoring scheme for each student. For each ESR, at least one senior researcher performing successful research acts as the primary supervisor. To enable a balanced and broad, but at the same time in-depth training of the ESRs and to promote the knowledge transfer between the partners, one or more co-supervisors from the same or different partner institutions have been also nominated. The ESRs are part of one local research group, where monitoring tools for the individual research projects and training are in place, such as regular presentation in group seminars and written reports.

2. Selection and evaluation

The recruitment process targeted talented and highly motivated Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) from all over the world. The selection and evaluation process contained the following stages

1. Eligibility check
2. Peer-review evaluation
3. Interview
4. Final selection

The Steering Committee performed a final review of the 15 top-ranked applicants and assessed if all the research focus areas covered by the doctoral programme were represented in a balanced way. 15 applicants were selected to the doctoral programme and employed by the partnering institutions.


3. Training and dissemination

At the programme level, BioMEP has provided training activities in the field of biomedical engineering and medical physics in a series of events. BioMEP students have attended courses provided by all the partner organizations. Thus, the ESRs have benefitted from the opportunities derived from the participation in the BioMEP beyond what each partner institution will provide individually.

Each ESR made a personal career development plan together with their supervisors covering research project proposal, scientific objectives, and schedule of envisaged courses, secondments, and as well long-term career planning. The ESRs were encouraged to have at least one secondment/internship to another partner organization and/or private sector collaborator. The secondments were strongly promoted by the doctoral programme. Altogether 14 secondments and 8 research visits took place during the programme.

All research publications made in the BioMEP doctoral programme were open access. During the programme period, 43 peer-reviewed scientific articles were published. BioMEP ESRs have attended numerous conferences, seminars, and workshops during the programme. The ESRs have attended events 138 times and held 47 poster presentations in addition to 85 oral presentations. All public defences of dissertations were advertised on the BioMEP website and Facebook page and streamed online for the general public.

Two provisional patent applications were submitted in the programme period.

4. Ethics

The Advisory Board carried out the analysis of ethical aspects. The objective of this Board was to make sure that BioMEP does not support research which would be contrary to ethical principles, and if the procedures to prevent ethical issues described in the project (including candidates’ research project) are in agreement with the hosting institution ethical Policies. During the programme, the ethics monitoring was continuously performed by the supervisors and follow-up groups of the fellows. No ethical issues needed to be declared.
BioMEP aimed to form young researchers in biomedical engineering (BME) and medical physics (MP) that play a pivotal role in pushing forward this highly competitive field by offering excellent training, research opportunities and improved working conditions to the early-stage researchers (ESRs). The ESRs will help Europe to reach and maintain a leading role in health technology industry sector, academia, and hospitals with large economic implications. The health-related technologies developed by our ESRs have the potential not only improve the health and quality of life of people, but also diversify Europe’s knowledge-based economy through technology transfer and spin-off companies that support growth in the health technology area.

In addition to the complementary training on excellent theoretical and applied skills from the partners’ areas of expertise, the ESRs gained an international perspective on their research topic. The international mobility of ESRs among trained them in adapting to new learning and working environments and to new cultures. Through the cooperation, the ESRs have developed their teamwork skills by working together with research groups and experts from partner institutions, hospitals, and other research institutions. Besides the mutual benefit for the ESR and the hosting institution, the knowledge exchange especially for ESRs during the secondment/research visit to a different type of institution have enabled them to get a broader view on possibilities for their professional careers. BioMEP has reinforced existing research collaborations between the different partner universities and created new ones.

The patent applications further enhance the impact of the programme. Also openly shared data/models can be further exploited by others in the future.
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