Following on from the success of last year’s inaugural event and in line with our new strategy, Biomedical Science Day 2018 aims to raise public awareness of biomedical science.
We are once again calling on our members to take part and help us showcase the profession to a wider audience. This year we have created additional resources to help you plan, promote and support your events, while announcing grants of up to £500 to help fund a range of activities for your Biomedical Science Day celebrations.
At the heart of healthcare
This year’s event aims to promote biomedical science further, showcasing the vital role our members play in a person’s healthcare throughout their lifetime, and to highlight the different roles our profession has in that journey. The theme for 2018, “At the heart of healthcare”,
will be used to show how your work produces the data on which doctors, consultants and surgeons base their diagnoses to plan treatment, from the newborn heel prick blood test to the monitoring and treatment of diseases and infections.
Apply for funding for your event
To celebrate Biomedical Science Day on 19th July 2018, grants of up to £500 are available for members who wish to develop public engagement activities.
Events and activities should aim to raise public awareness of, and engagement with, biomedical science. They should also demonstrate the value of biomedical science and its role in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.
The grants, which have been made available courtesy of The Albert Norman Memorial Fund, may be used to support a range of activities, including buying exhibition space, marketing and communications materials, refreshments for event/activity participants, incentives and giveaways. We recognise that not all members are able to participate on the day, therefore, grants may be used for activities up to 30 September 2018.
For more details and to apply, please visit www.ibms.org/biomedicalsciencedayfunding
Promoting the day
To help you organise your event, over the coming weeks additional information and resources will be added to our dedicated website. These will include help for you to plan, prepare and promote your Biomedical Science Day events and activities.
A Biomedical Science Day guidebook will include ways to promote your event, how to attract local media attention, press release templates, social media and photography guides, invite templates and much more.
Promotional items will be available for members to order online, including posters, leaflets and freebies.
There will also be downloadable Biomedical Science Day 2018 logos and links to presentations, activities and videos to support your planned events. www.biomedicalscienceday.com
Share the message
To help us spread the message, members can show support by sharing, reacting to and commenting on our posts on Twitter and Facebook. Once again, we’ll have photo competitions and challenges for you to share images of your work and colleagues. Competitions and prizes will be announced shortly.
Please follow our accounts @IBMScience on Twitter or search and like Institute of Biomedical Science on Facebook for regular updates.
Founding of the day
So the IBMS came up with the idea of a day of promotion and celebration of biomedical science. After looking at potential dates to celebrate, in an already packed calendar of events, it was decided that the most suitable date to hold a day of events was on the birth date of our founder, Albert Norman (19 July). Unfortunately, that gave us only six weeks to devise a plan, inform our members and get our promotional materials designed and sent out. Rather than hold off for the following year we decided to plough ahead for 2017 and use it as a trial run. What happened next went beyond our wildest expectations.
We decided that the first theme would be to celebrate and promote the diverse roles of our members in biomedical science. The response we got from our members was incredible. We were inundated with responses on the day and received submissions and replies for many days after. Our social media posts were seen by an incredible 166,198 people on the day, while our dedicated website page attracted 834 visits in just 12 hours.
Biomedical science staff from outside the UK also took part, including members from Finland, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Croatia using the opportunity to promote their roles in biomedical science.