The first International Day of Radiology (IDoR) is being held on 8 November, the day that Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered the existence of x-rays in 1895.
The International Day of Radiology is being organised across the world by the European Society of Radiology (ESR), the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and the American College of Radiology (ACR). Numerous activities are taking place across the globe aiming to build greater awareness of the value that radiology contributes to safe patient care.
Here at COCIR, we need no convincing about the benefits of medical imaging, an advanced highly-innovative technology which is helping to increase life expectancy and contributing to reducing healthcare costs. We believe that diagnosis is the foundation of medicine and new diagnostics – imaging technologies, in vitro assays and others – will provide the foundation for personalised medicine.
As part of its ongoing commitment to ensuring safe, appropriate and effective medical imaging while maintaining the development and access to highly-innovative technologies for patients, COCIR is actively contributing to the ongoing discussions in Europe related to radiation protection. The Recast of the EURATOM Directives has impacted the use of ionizing radiation in medical imaging and we are also proactively cooperating with the European Radiation Competent Authorities (HERCA) since February 2010 to reduce the radiation dose in computed tomography (CT) equipment. As a result, we published a COCIR CT manufacturers’ voluntary commitment in May 2011 which is constantly being updated.
Since 2003, COCIR has been actively engaged with stakeholders in the development of the Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Directive as we believe its revision should not hamper the development and use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in Europe, a proven technology benefiting citizens at large.
We’ll be tweeting updates on the International Day of Radiology on twitter with hashtag #IDoR2012. Follow us at www.twitter.com/cocir.
Nicole Denjoy
6 novembre 2012