Disputationes (a word in Latin language meaning “Discussing, Arguing”) is a self-sustaining multidisciplinary international initiative aimed at creating a dynamic forum to discuss, through a permanent series of internationally relevant sober meetings and publications, the hottest and most visionary subjects in the bio-medical field. Disputationes has the ambitious goal of eventually providing to all scientists, healthcare workers, policymakers and medical executives around the world, a face-to-face platform to exchange ideas, share update breakthroughs and promising solutions to most important issues in healthcare. In this respect, Disputationes will disseminate the knowledge permitting an equal access to the most advanced concepts and applicatory procedures by all individuals independently of their geographic and economic conditions in order to benefit disability and sustain advanced biomedical industries. In this context, a particular focus will be set on the convergence between bio-medicine and engineering stimulating scientist creativity and vision and indicating to industries future medicine scenarios for long-term strategies.

Words like regenerative medicine, information technology, advanced materials, imaging, nanotechnology, robotics, microelectronics and sophisticated modeling and simulation are now usual in biomedical research and clinical centers. In fact, the medical science of to-day embraces not only the knowledge of the living systems, but also of such facts, principles, and materials gathered from every other domain of human knowledge as may increase resources for preventing or alleviating man suffering and prolonging his life. Indeed, the most exciting feature in the science of medicine is the rapid accumulation of facts furnished by a vast number of individual researchers, each pushing investigations in some special direction, even if, sometimes, with poor concert and inadequate conception of the coincident lines of observation necessary to enable him to see the true bearing of the facts he evolves.

Disputationes will contribute to relate the multiplex aspects of the extensive and ever extending field of medical science, helping to unravel the complexity of the problems pressing for solution. The evolution of the bio-medical research from an artisanal to a clinical enterprise requires a commitment toward industrial ‘‘standardization’’ of the different aspects composing the mosaic of materials, procedures, and expertise contributing to the successful exploitation of this complex endeavor. Standardization is a fundamental achievement of the industrial society that has made available safe and cost-effective tools. A continued process of standardization has spurred research into innovative solutions and affected all aspects (materials, procedures, regulations, etc.) of technological and the associated business development.

The aggregate benefit derived from all this active interaction is beyond easy expression in words, but will represent the added value of Disputationes. This endeavor, however, will require the collaborative efforts of various sectors in society, as well as the global community, since healthy people are every nation’s valuable assets, as a productive workforce drives forward the economy. More importantly, having a healthy state of the body and the mind is a fundamental right of everyone in every society. This entails that healthcare technologies must be made available to the population in need of them at affordable prices in the global and national context, considering the issues related to research and development and production capacity, technology transfer, and trade regulations. Therefore, Disputationes is fully committed to “building fairness and reducing inequity” to ensure access to affordable, safe and effective healthcare technologies as well as to promote policy issues that are relevant in any setting, regardless of the country’s economic status.

It is time that we get together to forge a new movement that will not only take medical science and technology to even greater heights, but ensure that the fruits of growth and development reach the most disadvantaged. We can certainly do it. And we must do all that we can to achieve this transformation.