Biomedical Science Day History

Biomedical Science Day is the IBMS annual celebration of biomedical science

Biomedical Science Day was conceived in May 2017, following research of IBMS communications and feedback from our members. We found that biomedical science professionals felt that the profession was not being promoted and that their hard work was not being celebrated enough.

So, the IBMS came up with the idea of a day to promote and celebrate biomedical science. After looking at potential dates 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. Unfortunately, that gave us only 6 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 plan ahead for 2017 and use it as a trial run, what happened after frankly blew us away!

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 were still receiving submissions and replies for days after. Biomedical science staff from outside the UK also took part, including members from Finland, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya promoting their roles in biomedical science. 

Celebrating online

Our social media posts were seen by an incredible 166,198 people on the day! On Facebook, our posts were seen by 114,692 unique accounts, on Twitter 51,506 unique accounts viewed our tweets. Whilst, our dedicated website page attracted 834 visits in just 12 hours. 

Poster and photo competitions

We had hundreds of requests for posters, sending out over 600 worldwide. We also posted 49 Albert Norman celebratory birthday cards to all of our members who were born on 19 July. Our requests for lab photos received over 300 submissions from biomedical science staff, whilst 294 people supported our Facebook profile ribbon campaign.

You can view the Facebook gallery of some of the photos from the day on our Facebook page

Hospital events

With very little prompting from the IBMS, our members set about celebrating the day with a range of events in hospitals across the UK. In East Lancashire local MP, Julie Cooper attended a hospital laboratory to mark the day. Whilst other hospitals and trusts held tours for patients and local schools. Further details can be found in our news story.