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Magnetic resonance imaging brain scans

World Health Day, celebrated on 7 April, marks the anniversary of the World Health Organisation (WHO)

The theme of this year’s World Health Day is ‘Depression’. According to the WHO depression is the leading cause of ill health and disability worldwide. Read more about World Health Day 2017.

EURAMET is active in the area of metrology for health. Health related measurements are different from other areas as the measurement object is a human being and application of measurement methods can be challenging. This can lead to poor repeatability and reproducibility, and inexact definitions of what is physiologic or pathologic. 20 joint research projects have been funded within the health calls of EURAMET’s European Metrology Research Programmes (EMRP and EMPIR). Another EMPIR call for health projects will be launched in 2018.

The health projects support the reliable and efficient exploitation of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques and the development of new technologies to improve healthcare and patient protection. Focus is placed on research to address major health-related societal challenges including lifestyle-related health issues, neurodegenerative diseases and global health issues such as anti-microbial resistance and emerging epidemics.

Additionally, EURAMET established a Task Group on metrology for health in 2013. The main objective of the Task Group is to organise the scientific and technical collaboration in health related fields among EURAMET members and associates and to form a coherent and comprehensive approach on metrology for health.

A comprehensive overview of EURAMET's health projects can be found here for EMRP and EMPIR.

To celebrate World Health Day 2017 EURAMET has published 14 case studies showing early impact from the EMRP joint research projects on metrology for health.

• Better infant hearing tests
• Spotting inter cell communications
• Counting particles to spot cancer
• Simpler disease diagnostics
• Increasing access to anaemia testing
• High resolution brain scans
• Improving radiotherapy success
• MRI standards spur innovation
• Safer MRI for metal implant wearers
• Better flow measurement, safer patients
• Fast track to drug discovery
• Accurate dose means effective therapy
• Traceability Boosts Cancer Therapy
• Hitting the target for cancer