As Chair of the Public Affair Working Group of the EAMBES (European scientific society of BMEs), Dr Pecchia supported the European Parliament in establishing the first European Parliament Group on Biomedical Engineering (EPIG-BME), chaired by the Italian MEP Nicola Caputo and Lara Comi.
o The first action of the EPIG-BME was to table 2 parliamentary questions:
- The former asking why, different to the USA, the Horizon 2020 vision does not have a dedicated space for BME (link).
- The latter asking why BME is not listed among the professions that the European Commission officially recognizes (link).
o TheEPIG-BME has met twice to discuss BME contributions to European policies:
- The 31st of May 2016, Launch of the first Euro Parliament Interest Group on Biomedical Engineering (EPIG on BME), which aimed to discuss with the European Commission the recognition of BME in Europe, their contribution to Horizon2020 calls, their involvement in MDD preparation (link).
- The 11th of October 2018, aiming to discuss possible BME contributions in preparing the Horizon Europe framework and how BME, European and African institutions can cooperate to harmonies African regulations on Medical devices and medical locations with the European ones (link).
Today, the results of these actitions have taken us to a step towards the BME recognition…BME has been included in the ESCO database.
