The state of the profession.

This paper was presented at the 35th IMI Conference at the request of the Conference Chairman, with a remit to address the current state of the profession and, more importantly, to speculate about its future in the next ten or twenty years. This has proved a difficult task, and, if I am honest, I do not have a definitive response to the latter: the only way it is possible to give any thoughts on the matter is to base it on my own personal background of forty-six years in the profession. Also, because there have been several good papers in this Journal recently about the changing role of medical illustration, I am simply looking at our profession from a different viewpoint. The areas relevant to our discussions are medical illustration, medicine and technology. The combination of these is having, and will continue to have, a profound effect on our future. So the equation is somewhat complicated, and it could be argued that aspects of our future are out of our control, which is slightly worrying, as I will return to later.