Congress:
EuroSafe Imaging 2017
Keywords:
Safety, Radiation safety, PET, CT, Radioprotection / Radiation dose, Action 13 - Stakeholder engagement and collaboration, Action 9 - Facilitation of research in advanced topics of radiation protection, Action 12 - Cooperation with international radiation protection initiatives and other stakeholders including IAEA, WHO, ICRP, HERCA, European Commission, Action 10 - Improved communication and collaboration of health professionals in radiation protection, Action 7 - Medical radiation protection research: MELODI, EURAMED, Dosimetric comparison, Quality assurance, Radiotherapy techniques
Authors:
C. Hoeschen, J. Damilakis, W. Doerr, G. Frija, G. Glatting, H. Langendijk, K. Muylle, G. Paulo, W. Stiller, V. Tsapaki, J. McNulty
DOI:
10.1594/esi2017/ESI-0053
Conclusion and Recommendations
The long-term goal of EURAMED is to establish an independent and sustainable platform in order to increase its visibility and become eligible for participation in European and international projects.
Establishing EURAMED as a legal entity is considered important in order to facilitate and coordinate European research activities in the area of medical radiation protection.
This will allow it to assume an umbrella function for the harmonisation of practice,
ensuring an improvement in the European radiation protection safety culture within medicine.
The mission of EURAMED is to:
- Jointly improve medical care through sustainable research efforts in medical radiation protection
- Identify common research areas and define a common strategic research agenda
- Serve as a platform for medical radiation protection research,
linking researchers and clinicians,
adopting a harmonised approach to lobbying at European level to impact the European research funding landscape
- Develop an aligned approach and response to European research calls.
It is important to highlight that the approach to improve the use of ionising radiation in medicine by pure fundamental research would lack impact and influence unless having immediate consequences for and being translatable to everyday clinical practice.
It is also important that the results of the research are not only translatable but really translated into daily routines.
Therefore it is essential that the research is undertaken in a concise manner by persons educated and trained for good medical practice.
The results have to be evaluated in clinical practice and have to be made public in a way that it is easy to access (results and implementation guidelines available on the internet) and to implement the methodologies developed.
Educating the staff working in the field on the highest possible level is essential to guarantee a direct clinical impact and to ensure high-level,
standardised medical care and related radiation protection fully exploiting all research conducted with regard to radiation protection in the medical field throughout Europe.