Physics & Medicine: Toward a Future of Integration: Trento, November 6th-8th 2014: Abstract book

The relationship between physics and medicine has ancient roots that sink to the dawn of medicine with the use of physical techniques, like heat and light, to diagnose and treat diseases. In the 17th century, with the advent of the experimental method, the mechanistic description of nature was soon extended to living creatures. Physics contributed both to the establishment of new medical disciplines such as biomechanics, electrophysiology and ophthalmology and supported many other clinical practices and medical researches through the development of a huge number of physicsbased devices for clinical measurement, diagnosis and treatment. However, medical physics, as we usually understand the term, emerged as a distinct discipline in the 20th century in response to the growing use of ionizing radiation in both diagnosis and treatment. The urgent need to associate to the team of health professionals dealing with ionizing radiation a physicist with the central role of warrantor of the safe and effective use of radiation became soon evident and led to a new health-care profession: medical physics. The actual Conference “Physics & Medicine. Toward a future of integration” has been organized by the University of Trento, the Azienda Provinciale per i Servizi Sanitari of Trento and the Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. The goals of the meeting are: to review the current status of main topics of medical physics and give a vision of coming developments; to consider the profession and the role of the medical physicist projected in the new organizational models of health services; to analyze patterns of training and retraining of medical physicists as well as the basic training programs for future physicians; to discuss the contribution of research in physics as applied to medicine as an engine for innovation in health care.