New Board Chairman at VDE DGBMT: “Supporting megatrends, ensuring medical care”

VDE DGBMT (the German Society for Biomedical Engineering) has elected a new Board Chairman. Beginning this month, Prof. Jens Haueisen will hold the office for one and a half years before handing over to Prof. Karsten Seidl, while Prof. Thomas Lenarz and Christian Erbe will deputize. The management team intend to translate the strategic realignment of DGBMT in recent years into implementation projects, aiming to make full use of the opportunities that biomedical engineering offers for prevention, diagnostics, therapy and aftercare in the future. “By offering scientific support relating to disruptive developments and megatrends, we as a specialist society can help transform innovations into safe new ways of providing medical care,” says Haueisen. “Another important focus for me is the issue of sustainability.”

Innovations can make up for skilled labor shortage

VDE DGBMT is convinced that the proper use of digitalization, artificial intelligence and networking will give rise to technologies that can provide solutions to deal with the increasing shortage of skilled workers. For example, the society expects an upsurge in innovation for the use of robotics in surgery and nursing, mobile health care and personalized medicine. Seidl sums up: “We want to help boost Germany as a scientific hub and shape the future of biomedical engineering to the benefit of patients.

To achieve this, we need to encourage people to take action and promote young scientific talent – so we will be working on that too.”

Prof. Jens Haueisen has been head of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Informatics at the Technical University of Ilmenau since 2005. He conducts research on measuring and analyzing bioelectrical and biomagnetic data and on neuro-ophthalmology. Prof. Haueisen has been President of the International Steering Committee for Optimization and Inverse Problems in Electromagnetics since 2010, head of the DGBMT expert committee “Magnetic Methods in Medicine” since 2011 and a full member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2014.

Since October 2018, Prof. Karsten Seidl has been head of the Business Unit Health at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS) and professor of micro- and nanosystems for medical technology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He specializes in the development of smart sensor systems for medical implants, for the next generation of in-vitro diagnostics and for non-invasive healthcare applications. He has been co-spokesperson of the DGBMT expert committee on biomedical engineering in education and training since 2016 and spokesperson of the expert committee on micro- and nanosystems since 2021.

Prof. Thomas Lenarz had been head of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at Hannover Medical School since 1993. His work focuses in particular on the field of hearing implants – specifically cochlear implants, auditory brainstem implants, auditory midbrain implants and implantable hearing aids. Prof. Lenarz has been a member of the DGBMT Board since 2010 and a member of the Acatech National Academy of Science and Engineering and the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences since 2013. He has also been a voting member of the scientific advisory board of TÜV Süd and member of the pool of experts of the Federal Joint Committee (innovation committee) since 2020.

Christian O. Erbe holds overall responsibility for the corporate group Erbe Elektromedizin GmbH, a family enterprise established in 1851 with global operations in the field of medical technology. He has been a member of the Board of the Medical Engineering Division at ZVEI (the association for Germany’s electro and digital industry) since 2004 and took over as chair in 2014. He was elected as President of the Reutlingen Chamber of Industry and Commerce in 2010, and he represents the Baden-Württemberg Chambers of Industry and Commerce Association as Vice President.

The central focus of the work of VDE DGBMT is networking experts from the field of Medical Technology and Biomedical Engineering. With around 2,000 members and 22 expert committees, VDE DGBMT covers the entire range of topics in medical technology. In addition, the society organizes conferences and workshops for experts and runs two international scientific journals: Biomedical Engineering and Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering, both published by Walter de Gruyter. Independent and neutral position and white papers, opinions and expert articles shed light on current topics. DGBMT also awards scholarships for young scientists, for scientific excellence and innovations, and for patient safety in the field of biomedical engineering. Additionally, it represents the German biomedical engineering sector in international committees.

About VDE

VDE, one of the largest technology organizations in Europe, has been regarded as a synonym for innovation and technological progress for more than 125 years. VDE is the only organization in the world that combines science, standardization, testing, certification and application consulting under one umbrella. The VDE mark has been synonymous with the highest safety standards and consumer protection for over 100 years.

Our passion is the advancement of technology, the next generation of engineers and technologists, and lifelong learning and career development “on the job”. Within the VDE network, over 2,000 employees at over 60 locations worldwide, more than 100,000 honorary experts and 1,500 companies are dedicated to ensuring a future worth living: networked, digital, electrical. We shape the e-dialistic future.

The headquarters of VDE (Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies) is in Frankfurt am Main. For more information, visit www.vde.com.