The high-level workshop on International Standards for Medical Technologies, Geneva, 26-27 February 2004, is a forum where high-level representatives of the major players involved in this field (industry, regulators, the patient care community and standards developing organizations from all regions of the world) review the present situation and highlight the main trends in the sector, providing input on priorities, programmes and approaches for the development of standards and conformity assessment frameworks that respond optimally to market and society needs.

The workshop is organized by the World Standards Cooperation (WSC), the entity created by ISO, IEC and ITU-T in order to strengthen and advance the voluntary consensus-based international standards system, and held under the patronage of the World Health Organization (WHO), and in partnership with four organizations having relevant interests in the medical technologies field:

• GHTF, the Global Harmonization Task Force
• AAMI (USA), Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation
• Eucomed, the European Medical Technology Industry Association
• JFMDA, the Japan Federation of Medical Devices Associations

The WHO and the other four partner organizations are cooperating with the WSC on the definition of the structure and content of the programme, through the participation of experts and speakers and on the follow-up to the workshop.

The workshop involves a comprehensive and balanced participation of leaders from organizations interested and active in standardization for medical technologies – including leaders of ISO, IEC and ITU-T technical groups