Redefining and reinvigorating the role of physics in clinical medicine: A Report from the AAPM Medical Physics 3.0 Ad Hoc Committee

Ehsan Samei,¹ Todd Pawlicki,² Daniel Bourland,³ Erika Chin,⁴ Shiva Das,⁵ Mary Fox,⁶ D. Jay Freedman,⁷ Nicholas Hangiandreou,⁸ David Jordan,⁹ Melissa Martin,¹⁰ Robin Miller,¹¹ William Pavlicek,¹² Daniel Pavord,¹³ Lisa Schober,¹⁴ Bruce Thomadsen,¹⁵ Brendan Whelan¹⁶

¹Duke University, Durham, NC; ²University of California, San Diego, CA; ³Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC; ⁴British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver Island Centre, Victoria, BC, Canada; ⁵University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; ⁶Minneapolis Radiation Oncology, Minneapolis, MN; ⁷Riverside Cancer Care Center, Newport News, VA; ⁸Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; ⁹University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Cleveland, OH; ¹⁰Therapy Physics, Inc., Signal Hill, CA; ¹¹Northwest Medical Physics Center, Lynnwood, WA; ¹²Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ; ¹³Health Quest, Poughkeepsie, NY; ¹⁴American Association of Physicists in Medicine, Alexandria, VA; ¹⁵University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; ¹⁶University of Sydney, Australia

Medical Physics, 45, 9 (2018).

Derived from 2 yr of deliberations and community engagement, Medical Physics 3.0 (MP3.0) is an effort commissioned by the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) to devise a framework of strategies by which medical physicists can maintain and improve their integral roles in, and contributions to, health care and its innovation under conditions of rapid change and uncertainty. Toward that goal, MP3.0 advocates a broadened and refreshed model of sustainable excellence by which medical physicists can and should contribute to health care. The overarching conviction of MP3.0 is that every healthcare facility can benefit from medical physics and every patient’s care can be improved by a medical physicist. This large and expansive challenge necessitates a range of strategies specific to each area of medical physics: clinical practice, research, product development, and education. The present paper offers a summary of the Phase 1 deliberations of the MP3.0 initiative pertaining to strategic directions of the discipline primarily but not exclusively oriented toward the clinical practice of medical physics in the United States.