Originally written for publication during ECR 2020 in March and updated in June 2020.

EURAMED seeks radiologists, radiographers, radiation oncologists, nuclear medicine physicians, and medical physicists interested in advancing radiation protection research in the medical field

The European Alliance for Medical Radiation Protection Research (EURAMED) was established as a non-profit organisation in October 2017 by five medical associations involved in the application of ionising radiation in medicine – the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM), the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics (EFOMP), the European Federation of Radiographer Societies (EFRS), the European Society of Radiology (ESR), and the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO).

Prof. Christoph Hoeschen is currently Chair of Medical Systems Technology at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, where he is participating in many research projects focused on medical imaging, the resultant dosimetry, and the acceptable levels to ensure proper radiation protection. Also, he is currently Chair of the EURAMED Scientific Committee and was the founding president of EURAMED, for which he chaired the group developing the SRA on medical protection research (Photo © Harald Krieg/University Magdeburg).

EURAMED’s goal is to improve medical care and promote medical radiation protection (RP) through research efforts and to assume an umbrella function for the harmonisation of practice, with the goal of advancing the European radiation protection safety culture in medicine.

EURAMED complements existing European platforms in several other fields of RP, such as:

  • the Multidisciplinary European Low Dose Initiative (MELODI)
  • the European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS)
  • the European Platform for Nuclear and Radiological Emergency Response and Recovery (NERIS)
  • the European Radioecology Alliance (ALLIANCE)
  • the European platform for Social Sciences and Humanities in Ionising Radiation Research (SHARE)

European research projects to advance medical radiation protection

One of EURAMED’s core missions is to develop aligned approaches and responses to European research calls, especially when targeted at the platforms.

To that end, EURAMED led the successful submission of a proposal addressing the Horizon2020 NFRP-13 call ‘Research roadmap for medical applications of ionising radiation’ in September 2019. The project consortium comprises a group of 29 partners including major universities and research centres in the field. The 3-year ‘EURAMED rocc-n-roll’ project will start in September 2020. It will seek to establish an integrated and coordinated European approach to research and innovation for medical applications of ionising radiation and related RP, based on stakeholder consensus and existing activities in the field.

The project aims to critically assess current research and radiation protection needs in the clinical disciplines using ionising radiation, with the goal of benefitting the European population in the most optimal, safe, and egalitarian manner, by fostering clinical translation, while also strengthening economic growth and industrial competitiveness. Representation of relevant radiation protection disciplines, along with clinical experts in the field, will be complemented by policy, as well as by AI and industry experts in the consortium. A fully integrative approach such as this would therefore enable a broader framework for quality and safety in healthcare.

As a result, ‘EURAMED rocc-n-roll’ will produce a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for medical applications of ionising radiation and related RP issues, which will build upon the EURAMED SRA published in 2017, as well as the existing SRAs of the other radiation protection platforms. A corresponding roadmap and an interlink document will also be provided, and all of these reports will integrate and identify the synergies from the areas of radiation protection, health research and digitisation. This will be accompanied by education and training schemes for health workers and scientists to increase European research capacity in the field.

This work will largely depend on input from stakeholders in the field, in particular from the medical community.

Join EURAMED

EURAMED is recruiting medical research centres, university hospitals and industry partners as members to contribute to the advancement of this important research field. Since the focus of EURAMED is on the medical aspects of RP, medical research centres and university hospitals are especially encouraged to become full members.

More general information on EURAMED and its activities including a membership application are available at www.euramed.eu.

Current EURAMED Executive Board (Oct. 2019 – Oct. 2021)

EURAMED is currently presided over by Klaus Bacher from Ghent University, Belgium, who took over leadership from John Damilakis from the University of Crete in Iraklion, Greece, in October 2019. John Damilakis will continue serving on the EURAMED Executive Board as Past President. New members of the Executive Board include President-Elect, Boris Brkljačić from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, incoming Secretary Catharine West – in place of the recently deceased William Doerr – from the University of Manchester, UK, and new Member at large, Marc Benderitter from the IRSN in France. They will join Graciano Paulo from the Coimbra Health School in Portugal, in his continued role as Treasurer, and Guy Frija from the Université Paris Descartes in France, in his continued role as Member at large. EURAMED’s management is conducted by the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR).