[I172] IOMP project ‘history of medical physics’ – Objectives and first results

Purpose The International Organization for Medical Physics (IOMP) exists over 50 years. It collects information from all medical physics societies, thus collating a picture of the professional development. While during the mid-1960 there were c.6,000 medical physicists in the world, in 2017 these are c.26,000. However recently published report of Global Task Force on Radiotherapy for Cancer Control predicts that by 2035 the existing number of medical physicists has to triple. The lessons from the past 20 years show that to achieve such goal the profession has to invest in education and training activities, with emphasis on e-learning and international collaboration. In order to support this global effort, IOMP launched a new project “History of Medical Physics”, which will trace the professional development in various countries, showing specific models which could be useful for other countries. Methods This large international project will not only focus on the medical physics professional development. It will also show the development of the various branches in our profession. This way the project will create a Compendium of independent Volumes/Parts, which will reflect the main areas of development of medical physics. Results Three of the first chapters from two volumes have now been completed (c. 110 pages). The chapters are on the History of X-ray Tubes development (R Behling), the History of Film-Screen Receptors development (P Sprawls) and the History of e-Learning development (S Tabakov). These were published (as samples) in first Special Issue of the IOMP Journal Medical Physics International (April 2018) – www.mpijournal.org . The Journal also published a large material about the professional development in Middle-East (led by Niroomand-Rad and MEFOMP). Questionnaires have now been sent to all IOMP member societies, hoping the second stage to be completed by mid-2019. The presentation will focus on the current results and the future coordination of the project. Conclusions The project results will be a very useful source of information for future new developments in the profession and will provide a canvas for future updates. Very importantly, the project results will be a written proof of the significant role played by medical physicists in contemporary medicine.