History: What is HESTA?

HESTA is a small non profit professional organisation having as its mission the dissemination of technical information related to health, sport and exercise science. The association was established in 1988 in conjunction with the ACHPER conference held in the Brisbane during the World Exposition EXPO88. Since that time its domestic membership (Australia) has steadily grown and now also includes many members from overseas, particularly New Zealand. HESTA is a non-profit, apolitical group that aims to provide a constructive and supportive forum for the sharing of skills, knowledge and resources.

HESTA members have varied backgrounds and broad interests including biomechanics, exercise physiology, electronics, instrumentation, computing & software development and mechanical engineering. If you are involved in the instrumentation of any aspect of human physiology or performance, HESTA could well provide a valuable resource for you.

HESTA has for some time hosted a list server called HESTA-L that enables all members of the group to be instantly contactable. This provides a ready mechanism for answering technical questions, jobpostings and device sourcing.

Mission Statement.

HESTA’s mission is to provide the free dissemination of technical information related to the fields of sports and health sciences.

It aims to foster the development of technological solutions to the collection, analysis and processing of data gathered from human subjects.

HESTA strives to share information and knowledge amongst it’s members with the aspiration of assisting with technological problem solving, providing a forum for technical discussion and for the professional development of it’s members.

HESTA attempts to provide a wide network of knowledge to assist members in developing their technical skills to better enable them acquire, monitor and analyse human movement and exercise performance.

Membership.

HESTA is open to any person working with technology used to acquire data from human subjects. Having paid the membership fee applicants are then placed on the HESTA-L list-server which enables communication with all other members. Membership fees are charged to enable the organisation to purchase stationery, run bank accounts and to meet statutory and regulatory charges.

Benefits.

Being a member of HESTA enables access to wealth of technological experience accrued by it’s members. This experience can be readily accessed through HESTA’s list server connecting some 30+ members and by attending it’s regular conferences. Each member is supplied with a listing of all other member’s contact details providing an invaluable resource to fellow technologists.

Regular communication with members of the group provides a mechanism for support to problem solving, access to ideas and devices created by other members and a resource for sourcing components and instrumentation.