Posted: August 4, 2010

ANSI workshop report on nanomedicine terminology and standards now available

(Nanowerk News) The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) would like to inform all constituents that a workshop report on nanomedicine terminology and standards is now freely available.

The report was developed following a workshop co-sponsored by the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the ANSI-accredited U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) 229, Nanotechnologies. Held on July 12, 2010, the event brought together 25 participants from 21 organizations. Discussions centered on current concepts and categorizations of nanomedicine in order to identify pertinent and timely sub-categories for terminology purposes, and terms and challenges for populating those sub-fields.

ANSI compiled the findings of the workshop into a 25-page report that details the presentations and breakout discussion groups of the event. The report notes a number of important takeaways from the workshop, including the following:

The workshop demonstrated the ambiguity of terminology, identified stakeholders and their needs, and highlighted the aspects of medicine being impacted by nanotechnology. The fluid use of terms by the public and by individual scientists warrants standardization for the purposes of communications and public policy. It is likely that nanomedicine terms will be generated from diverse disciplines. For example, the physical chemist's substrate, a material surface supporting adsorption processes, differs from the biologist's substrate of a substance for activating an enzyme's function. Participants felt it will be useful to explore coordination and collaboration on an international level with the pharma, research, and medical communities.

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