IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society history

R. Stuart Mackay set up a medical engineering program between the Berkeley and San Francisco campuses of the University of California, and in 1956 the first student completed his doctorate.

In November of the following year the IRE Transactions on Medical Electronics began; Julia F. Herrick was the first editor, and she was succeeded by Lee B. Lusted in September 1959.

At the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, Herman Schwan obtained university approval for an independent Ph.D. program in biomedical engineering.

At the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, Herman Schwan obtained university approval for an independent Ph.D. program in biomedical engineering. For example, in 1963 MIT began offering a course titled “Chemical engineering in medicine,” which may have been the first such course in the United States.

In the United State the Engineers Joint Council Committee on Engineering Interaction with Biology and Medicine officially recommended the term “bioengineering” in 1966, but this did not become standard.

The First Annual Conference was held 6-7 October 1979 in Denver.

Leaders of EMBS felt, however, that EMBS was not getting its share of the profits from the joint endeavor, and beginning in 1986, EMBS held its conference apart from that of AEMB. The separation was beneficial to the Society’s financial position, but it led to the demise of the AEMB conference.

Toward the end of the decade the possible health effects of the electric and magnetic fields from electric power lines became a subject of widespread interest, and there were United States Congressional hearings on the subject on 6 October 1987 and much new research.

In 1990 the Administrative Committee established a new award, the Society Service Award “to recognize those EMBS members who have given exceptional and extraordinary service to the Society”. Society publications expanded in the 1990s.

Three years later still another Transactions was approved: the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, scheduled to begin publication in March 1997.