What is Biomedical Engineering?
Biomedical engineering is an emerging field in which engineers use traditional engineering techniques to solve medical and health-related problems. The biomedical engineer is a valuable resource for industry as he/she offers the ability to communicate with both engineers and clinicians. Since they speak both the languages of engineering and medicine, they are well suited to coordinate interactions with each group to improve both the speed in which projects can be completed and the project’s final quality. Biomedical engineering research is also a growing field, as funding agencies are beginning to understand the ability of engineers to find high-tech solutions to medical/health problems. Biomedical engineering is a diverse field having applications in all traditional engineering specialties; thus, students from any engineering background may flourish as a biomedical engineer.
Biomedical engineering is the application of engineering principles to the solution of problems in biology and medicine with the goal of improving health care. It is a continuation of man’s earliest efforts to understand the living world in terms of the most basic sciences – chemistry, physics, and mathematics – and of man’s efforts to comprehend the machinery of the body in terms of his own technological creations. It is a vibrant and growing branch of engineering in which knowledge and advanced technological skills are developed and applied to define and solve problems in the life and health sciences.
It’s a synthetic heart valve that saves a grandmother’s life. It’s a MRI scanner that reduces parents’ worries about their infant’s head injury. It’s an automatic biosensor for rapid gene sequencing. Biomedical Engineering is the newest engineering discipline, integrating the basic principles of biology with the tools of engineering to solve biological or medical problems. With the rapid advances in biomedical research, and the severe economic pressures to reduce the cost of health care, Biomedical Engineering will play an important role in the medical environment of the 21st century. Over the last three decades, Biomedical Engineering has evolved into a separate discipline bringing the quantitative concepts of design and optimization to problems in biomedicine. Students at the University of Michigan’s Department of Biomedical Engineering usually specialize in a sub-discipline by selecting one of six options: Bioelectrics, Biotechnology, Biomaterials, Biomechanics, Biomedical Imaging,
Biomedical engineering is a scientific discipline which brings the principles of engineering to biology and medical treatment. Engineers are world-famous for coming up with innovative approaches to problems, and they are fond of saying that no problem is too large for an engineer. Turning this can-do attitude to the field of medicine, biomedical engineers work on a wide variety of things, from artificial hearts to cultured skin grafts, in the hopes of advancing medical treatment. People who wish to study biomedical engineering must pursue training in both engineering and biology. Many universities have biomedical engineering departments to meet the need for new biomedical engineers and the growing interest in this field, and students typically pursue doctoral degrees in this field so that they can learn as much as possible. A wide variety of things fall under the purview of biomedical engineering. Most new medical devices, for example, are constructed by people in this field, including
Some people can periodically experience an abnormally low heart rate and can loose consciousness during critical life style moments such as physical activity, driving an automobile, or just walking up a flight of stairs. The cardiac pacemaker demonstrates the tremendous intersection of a significant medical problem with several key engineering specialties and is a great example of a Biomedical Engineering solution. Briefly, electrical and computer engineering skills are used to design the electronics and programming logic which drive the device – all pacemakers are based on fully functioning microprocessors. The pacemaker is implanted inside the human body (a particularly hostile environment) and therefore must be impervious to the biological fluids and must also not cause a rejection reaction. Thus the biocompatibility issues and the subsequent solution with engineered biomaterials were crucial to the long term success of the pacemaker. Additionally the wires connecting the device wit
