HKIE BME 2023 conference was held on 11-12 Aug at the Charles K. Kao Auditorium “Golden Egg” and the INNO2 of the Hong Kong Science Park (HKSTP). This conference was organized by HKIE Biomedical Engineering Division (BMD), co-organized with Hong Kong Centre for Cerebro-cardiovascular Health Engineering (COCHE) and the Hong Kong Medical and Healthcare Device Industries Association (HKMHDIA), supported by HKSTP, EMSD, HKBIO, ARC, Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center, HKETA, Gense, HKU BME AA, CityU, CUHK, HKU, HKUST, MU, PolyU and HK Tech300; and sponsored by Vincent Medical, PhoMedics, Gleneagles Hospital Hong Kong and AML Holdings Ltd.
The conference theme this year is ‘Healthcare Innovation & technology: Roles of HK Biomedical Engineers in the Greater Bay Area (GBA)’. We are honored to have three Guests of honor, Prof. Dong Sun JP, Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, together with Mr Albert Wong, Chief Executive Officer, HKSTP and Ir David Wong, Chairman of HKIE Biomedical Division (BMD), who joined us for the opening ceremony. They talked about exciting developments related to BME locally and in GBA, and shared with us that there are ample opportunities for biomedical engineers. This marked a great opening for the conference.
This conference aims to bring frontier and emerging biomedical topics from healthcare organizations, industries, start-ups and universities. Importantly, it provides an interdisciplinary atmosphere for students, engineers and experts to connect and exchange ideas. I am pleased to report that we had about 300 registered participants, 6 plenary presentations, 19 keynote presentations, together with 20 pitches and 27 poster presentations from our young generations. We also had 40 secondary students registered via the Bright Future Engineering Talent Hub, CityU joined us. Our distinguished local and non-local speakers came from Switzerland, USA, and regions of China, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Suzhou, Beijing, and Hong Kong.
The abstract selection process has not been easy, thanks to our dedicated co-chairs, organizing committee, and scientific committee. We collected high quality works covering a wide range of topics related to pressing needs of the society, such as smart healthcare using artificial intelligence and robotics, imaging, in-vitro diagnostics, research and development of medical devices, smart healthcare data management and regulatory affairs.
In addition to these exciting scientific exchanges, we also had the 1st Final Year Project Competition co-organized with HKU BME AA, booths to show case the healthcare technologies from Vincent Medical and PhoMedics, and the alumni corner to facilitate networking among local biomedical engineers. Participants were also engaged in entrepreneurship sharing from our founding member Prof. John Mok.
This conference has instilled interesting engineering concepts in students and enhanced the synergy among stakeholders of biomedical engineering, including academia, industry, regulatory body and healthcare sector.
Last but not the least, sincere thanks go to all of our esteemed guests, speakers, student helpers, attendees, supporting organizations and sponsors. Special thanks go to our organizing committee (Ir Prof. Richard So, Dr. Thomas Lee, Dr. Martin Mak, Dr. Wei-Ning Lee, Ir Dr. Barry Mok, Ir Cristina Leung, Ir Karon Lo, Dr. Russel Wade Chan, Dr. Anson Tang, Ms Jenny Ip, Mr Bryan Pang), who had spent many evenings together to plan this event, and our dedicated COCHE administrative team (Solina, Yolaine, Emily, Cathy, Gabrielle and MC, Robert). I would also like to thank the HKIE BMD committee, Ir David Wong, Ir Karon Lo and Ir Jeremy Wong, as well as the founding members, Ir CK Li, Ir Albert Poon, Ir Frank Chan JP, Ir John Mok and in memory of Ir Francis Chan. Thank Prof. Yong Zhang, Head of CityU BME who gave us the closing remarks.
Hope we can get together again in our next HKIE BME conference and exchange more exciting frontier development in the field. In particular, we are biomedical engineers who are passionate to engineer a better future healthcare.
Ir Prof. Kannie WY Chan
General Chair of HKIE BME Conference 2023
Department of Biomedical Engineering,
City University of Hong Kong;
Hong Kong Centre for Cerebro-Cardiovascular Health Enginering;
Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and
Radiological Science,
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine