John Damilakis, PhD
President, IOMP

The importance of good internal organization, IOMP School Operations Manual, How to interact with IOMP

Dear Colleagues,

As mentioned in a previous President’s message (IOMP Newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 4, August 2022), IOMP needs to streamline processes and improve its internal organizational structure. We continually assess and improve the internal organization to be responsive to the needs of our members, and able to achieve our initiatives. Internal documents are currently being created to describe procedures that facilitate day-to-day work. Moreover,  there were several suggestions for additions and modifications of the IOMP bylaws e.g., adding information about the Women subcommittee and the MPI journal. ExCom has already endorsed some by-laws amendments and they will be sent to Council for approval soon.

The IOMP School was established in 2016 and its mission is to extend and coordinate teaching activities globally. Since then, IOMP School courses have been organized in connection with major medical physics events. Moreover, the School organizes monthly webinars. Recordings of these events can be found at https://www.iomp.org/iomp-school/. The School needs an operation manual to describe in detail the processes that the School uses to provide its services. During the last IOMP School Board meeting (October 17, 2022) a draft version was presented and discussed. This version includes the organizational structure of the School (Board composition, Board role and responsibilities) and operating procedures (type of events, event organization procedure, accreditation of events, etc.). The final version will be shared soon for discussion at the IOMP School Board level and ExCom approval.

In the beginning of November, we received an email from a colleague asking about the different ways the national medical physics societies and individual members can interact with the IOMP. Members can be involved in IOMP in various ways, for example by a) participating actively in the IOMP Council, b) participating in the ICMP and the World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, c) participating in IOMP’s initiatives such as the IDMP and the IMPW, d) writing an article for eMPW on the Medical Physics situation in their country or a similar subject (in cooperation with the Editor), e) writing a short article for our e-Newsletter (in cooperation with the Editor), or making proposals to IOMP ExCom on any matter. A downloadable poster on this matter can be found at https://www.iomp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Interact-with-IOMP1.pdf