National Committee on Rehabilitation Engineering (NCRE)
1. Public role and professional standing
- The NCRE continued to work within the industry to promote quality services in the field of assistive technology by running a symposium on “Lifecycle Management of Assistive Technology” in partnership with the ARATA 08 conference in Adelaide during October. This symposium was attended by representatives of prescribers, users, suppliers and funders.
- Many of the NCRE members have also continued to be very active in standards development for Assistive technology
2. An inclusive professional team
- An underlying principle of rehabilitation engineering is assisting people with disability to be part of the community. The NCRE puts this into practice in daily operation through actively seeking participation of consumers in programs delivered by the committee.
3. Youth appeal
- Work is continuing on development and certification of the assistive technology technician course.
4. Chartered Status
- NCRE remains responsible for developing practice standards in Rehabilitation Engineering in line with the Biomedical College guidelines. Mentoring workshops have been a valuable tool in achieving this goal with a mentoring workshop planned to coincide with the 2009 symposium.
5. Continuing professional development
- Annual symposia continue to be a focus for the NCRE. 2009 sees this continue with planning in hand for a symposium to be held in Melbourne in September.
6. International reach and influence
- The NCRE continues to feed into national and international standards development. It also continues to fosters links for ongoing research and development with colleagues in the US and UK.
7. Internal (member) communications
- The NCRE run an active listserve for discussion of current tasks. The group is also beginning to explore the use of new web-based technologies to facilitate policy development across the geographically separated members of the committee.
8. A capable organisation
- While being a small discipline within the engineering fraternity, the rehabilitation engineering discipline, through the NCRE has remained active with several policy development projects on-going, annual symposia, at least annual face-to-face meetings and multiple teleconferences per year to achieve positive outcomes.
