Bio Medical

Try talking to your counselor!

I don't know of what "standard" curricula might be available for this combined field. You could choose a baseline of either engineering or medicine, and then enroll in courses from both disciplines.

On the engineering side, you would want to know about strength of materials, force analysis, corrosion, actuation methods, feedback control, and the like. On the medical side, anatomy and orthopedics would be obvious choices. Somewhere in the middle would be toxicity and reactivity of various engineering materials with the human or animal body.

I think there would be challenging and rewarding opportunities in this, and I wish you the best success.

A friend of mine, Dr. Mary Edgerton, began her studies in Bio Medicine with Physics then moved into Medicine. She now is with the University of Texas Medical Center doing research into Cancer. It is a long road, however, so plan to be a student for a very long time. Of course, one is a student for his entire life, anyway.

Speaking as a medically qualified person, I can assure you that studying medicine is not essential if you want to become a biomedical engineer, and probably a waste of time unless you are a genius. First and foremost you need to become a good engineer, and then to apply those skills to the problems that medicine and surgery face. The disciplines of mechanical and electronic engineering both have much to offer in the bioengineering field, so it is up to you to decide first what sort of engineer you want to be. As a mechanical engineer, for example, you might be involved in the production of artificial hips or hearts, as an electronic engineer it might be monitoring equipment, cardiac pacemakers or nerve stimulators. Don't think that you will be able to cover the whole field of biomedical engineering by yourself.

Hi Usha,

Bio Medical is new field and there is good scope in future in India and abroad. You can get job in good corporate sector such as Dr.Reddy and other cos.

Regards,

Suresh.Sharma.

There are two distinct path available for a prospective biomedical engineer. One will lead you to research, design and development or manufacturing of prosthesis or body parts replacement /components. The other will lead you to the technical applications and interface of medical devices and instrumentations as engineering is applied and used in the medical field. Both requires an engineering degree and depending on your particular inclination, you may either take electrical, electronics or mechanical engineering as your basic. Either way you will need a good background knowledge in anatomy and physiology as pre-requisites and a must before being accepted on to any medically related fields of applications, be it instrumentations or just being a regular clinical engineer here in the U.S..