EFOMP: the European roof for medical physics

Medical Physics is a field of applied physics and as such a comparatively young discipline. The roots of Medical Physics go back to the application of ionising radiation in diagnostics and therapy in the beginning of the last century. Between the years 1950 and 1970, the increasing importance and specialisation of Medical Physics led to the foundation of Medical Physics societies in most European countries. Currently, nearly all European states have Medical Physics societies, with more than 6,000 personal memberships. Due to an initiative of the English hospital physicists association (HPA), there was a suggestion in 1979 to form a European Roof organisation that included all national societies. In May 1980, this proposal led to the foundation of the “European Federation of Organisations in Medical Physics” (EFOMP) as an association of the European national societies in Medical Physics, which, in the EFOMP nomenclature are called “National Member Organisations (NMOs)”. Starting with 14 foundation member states, EFOMP today has 35 NMOs, which are not only restricted to the area of the European Community (EC), but also includes non-EC-member states such as Switzerland, and in the meanwhile also includes most East-European countries, and associated countries like Israel, Algeria and South Africa (Figure 1). The reason for the foundation of a European roof organisation was due to the fact that Medical Physics was practiced in the different states in quite a different way. In European countries, there was a large variation in education and training that was very differing or even missing regulations, and a very underdeveloped scientific collaboration between the countries.