Behavioural medicine can be defined as the interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of sociocultural, psychosocial, behavioural and biomedical knowledge relevant to health and illness and the application of this knowledge to prevention, etiology, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation. The scope of "behavioural medicine" extends from research efforts to understand fundamental biobehavioural mechanisms; to clinical diagnosis and intervention; to disease prevention and health promotion. The International Society of Behavioural Medicine (ISBM), as well as the national and regional societies and institutions of BM all over the world are intended to serve the needs of all health related disciplines concerned with the integration of psychosocial, behavioural and biomedical sciences.