What is BME?
Biomedical Engineering is a discipline that advances knowledge in engineering, biology and medicine, and improves human health through cross-disciplinary activities that integrate the engineering sciences with the biomedical sciences and clinical practice. It includes:
- The acquisition of new knowledge and understanding of living systems through the innovative and substantive application of experimental and analytical techniques based on the engineering sciences.
- The development of new devices, algorithms, processes and systems that advance biology and medicine and improve medical practice and health care delivery.
Source: The Whitaker Foundation
Why BME?
Biomedical engineering is such an exciting discipline largely because it is at the forefront of the medical revolution, including the technological advances that improve healthcare. It is characterized by the following types of activities:
- Uncovering new knowledge in areas of biological science and medical practice by applying engineering methods.
- Studying and solving medical and biological problems through analytical techniques in engineering.
- Designing and developing patient-related instrumentation, biosensors, prostheses, biocompatible materials, bioengineered tissues and organs, and diagnostic and therapeutic devices.
- Analyzing, designing, and implementing improved health-care delivery systems and apparatus in order to improve patient care and reduce healthcare costs in contexts ranging from individual doctors' offices to advanced clinical diagnostic and therapeutic centers.
Work done by a biomedical engineer may include a wide range of activities such as:
- Designing and developing artificial and bioengineered organs and tissues (hearing aids, cardiac pacemakers, artificial kidneys and hearts, blood oxygenators, synthetic blood vessels, skin, joints, arms and legs).
- Automated patient monitoring (during surgery or in intensive care, healthy persons in unusual environments, such as astronauts in space or underwater divers at great depth).
- Medical imaging systems (ultrasound, computer assisted tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, fluorescence and optical, etc.).
- Biomaterials design (mechanical, transport and biocompatibility properties of implantable artificial materials).
- Biomechanics of injury and wound healing (gait analysis, application of growth factors, etc.).
- Advanced therapeutic and surgical devices (laser system for eye surgery, automated delivery of insulin, etc.).
- Computer modeling of physiologic systems (blood pressure control, renal function, visual and auditory nervous circuits, etc.).
- Blood chemistry sensors (potassium, sodium, O2, CO2, and pH).
- Application of expert systems and artificial intelligence to clinical decision making (computer-based systems for diagnosing diseases).
- Design of optimal clinical laboratories (computerized analyzer for blood samples, cardiac catheterization laboratory, etc.).
Source: Biomedical Engineering Society
Next Step...
- BME: the career of choice by K Ropella
- Read about career and job opportunities in biomedical engineering.
- Learn about the educational options in Biomedical Engineering at WPI.
- Learn about the different specializations in Biomedical Engineering.
- Proceed directly to either Undergraduate or Graduate Programs.
Last modified: July 26, 2006 16:51:55