The clinical engineering profession: a new society

The formation of the new American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) on February 17, 1990 is a significant event in the development of the profession of clinical engineering. The issues facing the new society are substantial. ACCE founding fathers debated for nearly a year before making the decision to launch the new organization. Their path has taken them from individual and organizational professional society memberships, through an Ad Hoc Task Force on Clinical Engineering, to the formation of a new organization with a stated mission--but, so far, with only a handful of members to fulfill it. A founding group of 12 charter members elected Yadin David, P.E., Ph.D., C.C.E., of Texas Children's Hospital (Houston) to the ACCE presidency. David and a panel of five ACCE founding members conducted an open forum--National Clinical Engineering Society: One Year Later--during the 25th annual Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) meeting in Anaheim, California in May, 1990. This feature article summarizes the presentations and deliberations that occurred, and is a follow-up to the November 1989 feature article (Stern, 1989) and March 1990 publisher's editorial (Pacela, 1990) that appeared in this journal.