3rd Latin-American Conference on Bioimpedance

Preface The Third Latin-American Conference on Bio Impedance (3 rd CLABIO or CLABIO 2018) was held in Manizales, Colombia on October 4 th and 5 th 2018. The city of Manizales is the capital of Caldas, one of the three Departments forming part of an eco-region known in Colombia as the “Coffee Triangle”, which lies on the Western hillside of the central section of the Colombian Andes mountain range. The University of Caldas supported the event, especially through the Research Group on Electrical Bio-Impedance (GruBIE), the PhD program on Biomedical Sciences and the Faculty for Health Sciences. On this occasion, an academic event dedicated to “Clinical Applications of Electrical Biompedance” took place as a pre-conference activity on October 3 rd . This event was organized through the frame of an annual Symposium on Basic Biomedical Research (this one being the XIII), which is mainly aimed at students in the Faculty of Health Sciences (Human Medicine, Nursing and Physical Education) and is organized by the Department of Basic Sciences. Academic events in the field of Electrical Bio-Impedance (EBI) are usually and mainly attended by engineers, physicists and mathematicians, i.e. people on the technical side of the field, and little by end users as physicians, nurses, physical educators, nutritionists, physiotherapists and the like, i.e., people on the biological side of the field. In this instance, mainly due to the fact that the group behind the organization of CLABIO 2018 were, precisely, from the latter side, the emphasis was placed on biomedical applications of EBI and the majority of people attending both events were researchers and professionals more interested in its applications and practical use than in its technical aspects. This reminded me of the complaint regarding this issue by Professor Brian H Brown, my PhD tutor back in Sheffield, UK, who used to point out the need for greater involvement of people who develop devices, mathematical algorithms and different types of software, with those who are meant to use these at the final end of the chain. From my point of view, the need to collaborate and cross talk between these two sides of the equation is still valid and the field and the community of people working in EBI would benefit immensely by doing so. This is why the organizers at the University of Caldas feel very proud of what we achieved on this occasion in that people from different parts of the world, and with diverse backgrounds, came together and interacted during those 3 days. For instance, there were around 100 people participating in the events altogether from as many as 8 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and, of course, Colombia) and various and diverse backgrounds such as physicians, nutritionists, physiotherapists, physical educators, biologists and, of course, engineers.