Years of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the Emergence of a New Discipline

One of the fastest growing fields of technology—a field of astounding recent achievements and even more ambitious hopes—is biomedical engineering. Laboratory instrumentation, medical imaging, cardiac pacemakers, artificial limbs, and computer analysis of the human genome are some of its familiar products. Defined as the use of the principles and techniques of engineering to solve problems in biology and medicine, biomedical engineering today holds a prominent place as a means of improving medical diagnosis and treatment, as a business, and as an academic discipline. Yet 50 years ago it barely existed. It was in 1952 that a group of electronics engineers, members of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), established an organization within the IRE to consider “problems in biology and medicine which might be aided in solution by use of electronic engineering principles and devices.” This Professional Group on Medical Electronics, as it was called, grew steadily and expanded its area of interest. In 1963 the IRE and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) merged to form the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the IRE Professional Group on Medical Electronics merged with the AIEE Committee on Electrical Techniques in Medicine and Biology. Over the years since, the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), while growing into the largest international member-based society of biomedical engineers, has made, through its meetings, publications, and other activities, invaluable contributions in the advancement of the field. The 50th anniversary of the Society is an appropriate time to look back at the origins and growth of both the field of biomedical engineering and the EMBS. The Society, under the leadership of Past Presidents Banu Onaral and Andrew Szeto and current President Henrietta Galiana, has funded and directed a history project, the principal products of which are a narrative history and a set of oral-history interviews. The story to be told is a large and exciting one, and not all of it can be told here. The present account gives most attention to the aspects of biomedical engineering to which IEEE members (and, earlier, Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ