The BIPM's primary focus for over 100 years was on metrology in physics and engineering. This focus has to be broad as there are always new requirements: in areas such as nanotechnology, more precise time measurement for commerce and navigation, and a wide range of environmental measurements. The last of these requirements necessitated the inclusion of chemical measurements in the work of the BIPM in the 1990s, and, more recently, to further expansion in chemical metrology.

The measurement needs of new areas are continually being tackled as technological innovation spurs economic growth, and as the BIPM creates partnerships with other intergovernmental and international bodies. These partnerships, often supported by Memoranda of Understanding, include the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). As an example, in the last few years, in partnership with the WHO, the International Federation for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC), and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), we have begun to apply the core metrological concepts – traceability to the International System of Units (SI) and uncertainty of measurement – in the context of laboratory medicine. This is clearly an area of concern to us all. The international metrology community is, for example, making good progress in understanding and reducing, the uncertainties associated with many common medical measurements such as cholesterol in blood or the reliable detection of heart disease markers such as troponin. Based on more accurate information, metrologists can work with specialist medical and clinical users towards a world system in which the measurements made in such critical areas are harmonized, and the same results are obtained on the same samples worldwide.

As a result, clinicians will be able to make diagnoses, and prescribe treatments, based on more accurate and reliable measurement data than we have ever known before. Patients may have confidence that, if they need treatment away from home, the measurements are based on the same standard references. Of course there are huge economic, as well as social, benefits accruing from medical treatments based on more accurate and reliable measurements. A recent study estimated, for example, that the economic impact of the US programme associated with cholesterol measurements over a 13 year period was over $3.5 billion (net present value in 1999 US$).