Founding charter MMVII · A non-profit professional body

The Association.

A standing professional body of qualified implantologists, founded in 2007 to do one thing — make the choice safer for the patient. Everything else follows from that.

Independent Non-profit Forty-two countries Founding charter, MMVII

Our mission, in two sentences.

The Implantologists Association exists because a title is not a guarantee. Anyone, in most jurisdictions, can call themselves an implant specialist after a weekend course — and the patient has no public record to consult before they choose.

We hold our members to a written, dated, public standard. We document what they do, audit a random sample of it each year, and publish what we find. The mission is not education, not advocacy, not networking — it is the maintenance of a record on which a person seeking implant care can rely.

In short

One sentence, signed by every member

"I will be examined on entry, audited annually, and disciplined publicly if I fall below the standard I signed."

A short history.

The association was founded in April 2007 by eleven implant specialists who had spent the previous decade as expert witnesses in litigation against colleagues. They had come to the same conclusion separately: the profession had no working mechanism for self-correction. The complaint procedures of the time were closed, slow, and quietly settled.

In its first year, the association admitted forty-two members under a probationary statute. Within five years it had passed its first independent audit and published its first disciplinary ruling — a removal — under the name of the operator concerned. That ruling stood, and the association has not lost a defamation suit since.

In 2014, the journal Acta Implantologica began quarterly publication. In 2018, the registry opened to the public. In 2021, the disclosure register — industry payments, equity, speaker fees — became mandatory and searchable. In 2024, the association was cited by The Lancet as the first professional body to publish its own disciplinary rulings without anonymisation and survive doing so.

The founding eleven · 14 April 2007

The eleven who signed first.

Madrid · Founding President
Joaquín Alarcón Reyes F.I.A.
Geneva · Founding Vice-President
Margaux Bellard F.I.A.
Edinburgh
Donald M. Whitelaw F.I.A.
Boston
Helen Margolis F.I.A.
Buenos Aires
Augusto Salgado F.I.A.
Lyon
Camille Roux F.I.A.
Kyoto
Kenji Watanabe F.I.A.
Stockholm
Britt-Marie Sjögren F.I.A.
Lagos
Adebola Okoye F.I.A. (d. 2019)
São Paulo
Renata Cordeiro F.I.A.
Sydney · Founding Secretary
Robert J. Mead F.I.A.
— No vacant seat —
The eleven sit in equal standing; the table is closed. New Fellows enter through the Roll, not the founding column.
Year by year

Nineteen milestones, in date order.

  1. 2007
    Founding charter signed, 14 April, in Madrid. Eleven Fellows; first by-laws ratified the same week.
  2. 2008
    First cohort of forty-two members admitted under probationary statute; first Part I examination held in Madrid.
  3. 2010
    First public Standards hearing, in Geneva. Two complaints heard; one substantiated; the first named public censure issued.
  4. 2012
    First removal in the association's history — a former Fellow, named in the ruling. First defamation suit filed; later dismissed with costs to the association.
  5. 2014
    Acta Implantologica begins quarterly publication. Volume I, No. 1; ISSN 1971-0814.
  6. 2016
    Annual case-log audit becomes mandatory for all classes. First audit draw by lot, in public, at the spring Council.
  7. 2018
    The public registry opens. Member listings searchable by name, city, registry number, and class. The press is admitted to Standards hearings by application.
  8. 2021
    The disclosure register — industry payments, equity, paid speaking — becomes mandatory and publicly searchable. First member suspended for non-filing.
  9. 2024
    The Lancet editorial cites the association as the first professional body to publish disciplinary rulings without anonymisation and survive doing so.
  10. 2026
    Membership crosses 1,800 in good standing across forty-two countries. Volume XIX of the Journal in print.

The charter, in plain language.

The full charter is twenty-eight pages and lives at the Registrar's office. The clauses that matter most often are these:

  1. Admission is on evidence, not honorary, not for sale, not by founder's privilege.
  2. Renewal is annual and conditional on passing the standard.
  3. Every member submits an annual case log. A random sample is audited by two Fellows drawn by lot.
  4. Complaints from patients are accepted, investigated, and ruled on within ninety days.
  5. Disciplinary rulings are published, by name, in the next quarterly issue of Acta Implantologica.
  6. The Council serves three-year terms; minutes are signed and published the week after each sitting.
  7. The association takes no industry money. Dues from members, sales of the journal, congress fees — that is the income, and it is published every quarter.

Download the full charter (PDF, 218 KB).

What we do not do.

We are not a marketing body. We do not recommend brands. We do not run a referral scheme that pays the association. We do not accept industry sponsorship of the congress, the journal, or the website. We do not anonymise the operator in a disciplinary ruling.

We are also not a regulator in the legal sense — we cannot suspend a licence in a member's country, and we do not pretend to. What we can do is publish a current record. A patient, an insurer, a hospital, a colleague — anyone — can read that record and act on it.


Our accounts, in public.

The treasurer publishes a quarterly statement on the first business day after each quarter end. Revenue, by category. Expenses, by category. The audit, on a fixed schedule, by an independent firm rotated every three years.

In FY 2025, total revenue was €1.94 M. The full breakdown below; the audited statement is filed every March.

Revenue · FY 2025 share
Member dues, all classes1,377,40071%
Annual Congress fees271,60014%
Journal subscriptions & licences174,6009%
Named donations (no industry)116,4006%
Total revenue1,940,000100%
Expenses · FY 2025
Standards Council, audit, hearings718,20038%
Journal · editing, peer review, print415,80022%
Education · Congress, Trainee Day, exams340,20018%
Secretariat operations264,60014%
Legal reserves & contingency151,2008%
Total expenses1,890,00097%

The remaining 3% — €50,000 — is held in legal reserves for the defence of disciplinary rulings, where the association names a member and that member sues. The reserve has been drawn upon twice since 2007; both suits were dismissed and costs awarded to the association.

Read the most recent quarterly statement (PDF).

The disclosure register.

Every member files an annual disclosure: industry payments above €500, equity in any implant or biomaterials company, paid speaking, supplier exclusivity arrangements, and family interests in the same. The register is public, searchable by member, by company, and by year.

A member who fails to file is suspended after thirty days. A member who files falsely is referred to Standards, and the sanction is removal. There has been one such removal in the association's history; it is on the public record.

Where to write.

The association office is in Madrid. The Standards Council sits in Boston, Geneva, Edinburgh, and Lagos in rotation. Press enquiries are answered within one business day; complaints from patients are acknowledged the day they are received and ruled on within ninety days.

For the office, write to [email protected]. For complaints, see the patient-facing complaints page. For press, see press office.

Read on

The Council, the standards, the registry.

If this is the kind of body you have been looking for, the next pages explain how to find one of our members, how to become one, and what the standard requires.