The Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences was founded on the analogy of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) which includes in its membership international unions representing scientific disciplines basic to medicine, such as anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology and physiology. These disciplines cover only certain aspects of medical sciences and, essentially, CIOMS was conceived as an organisation to form a link between specialised international medical associations with research interests, analogous with the link that ICSU provides between international organisations of the basic sciences.