Incoming President's address

Abstract

First of all, I would like to thank you for the confidence that you have shown by electing me as President of the ISPO for the next triennium. I will do my very best to justify your confidence and will try to further strengthen the ISPO as my predecessors have already done. Since its foundation or rather since Knud Jansen, the Founder and first President , the ISPO has achieved remarkable success. A lot of development work worldwide in both industrialised countries and in low-income countries has been initiated and strongly supported by our society. It has been the main task of the ISPO to implement and push international standards in the field of specialist training. These standards are regarded as landmarks in the field of orthopaedic technical care. Indeed, the training of the specialists required is an important part of all developments and should be seen as a dynamic process rather than a static one. Therefore, we should not rest on our laurels but continue to adapt and develop the training guidelines and schemes. The international activities of the ISPO and its National Member Societies have made a great contribution towards the improvement of information about the multi-disciplinary methods in the care of disabled persons all over the world. These improvements have been achieved mainly through the publications and information put out by the ISPO and its members. Important examples of this are Prosthetics and Orthotics International, OrthoLetter, as well as the reports of consensus conferences on current topics, seminars and training events. Nevertheless, the more we achieve, the more we recognise those questions and problems that still require our commitment. In doing this, the ISPO has evolved from being merely a group of people with common interests into an internationally recognised specialist organisation. The enormous problems and requirements in lowincome countries have involved a great deal of commitment by the ISPO over the last 20 years. As a result we have developed into a group of recognised specialists, who are often asked for consultation and assistance. Therefore, the main parts of our time and activities have been directed towards the needs of lowincome countries. And this will not change in the future. We should not, however, forget the requirements of the industrialised countries. Ongoing developments and decisions that are made in the field of prosthetics and orthotics still require the attention of the ISPO and its members and I am convinced that these changes will continue to take up a lot of our time in the coming years and that will be one of our central working positions. Let me take Europe as one example of many. We can see increasing integration processes within the European Union however, there have not yet been any standardised training guidelines for prosthetics and orthotics specialists, nor has a standardised, recognised training scheme been agreed upon. Meanwhile time is running out and some day we will probably have to contend with dictated regulations. During the whole of my career, the ISPO has been my professional home. Here, I have been able to find resonance and answers to difficult tasks and solutions for problems as well as assistance from friends and colleagues within our organisation. Therefore, I would encourage all our young colleagues to benefit from this experience and to look upon the ISPO as their home on a national or international level. The strength of our society is its organisation which is composed of 35 national member societies and individual members from a further 45 countries. One of the major tasks of the new Executive Board will be to continue the course of expansion as well as strengthening dialogue and communication within our National Member Societies this cannot be underestimated in a period of globalisation. In the name of the ISPO I would like to thank Norrie (Norman Jacobs) our outgoing President and his Executive Board for all their achievements. Over the last three years they have set the course for the