Biomedical engineering education最新文献

Purpose: Clinical immersion (CI) programs allow biomedical engineering (BME) students to experience the clinical environment and interact with users of medical technology, providing a deeper understanding of the applications of BME. In this study we describe a summer CI program and report on quantitative and qualitative analysis, to assess the impacts of this CI program for BME students.

Methods: Over six years, 75 students participated in this BME CI program. Students participated in observational clinical rotations selected to maximize exposure to operative and interventional procedures reliant on medical devices, and interacted with clinicians, staff, patients, and product/device representatives. Additionally, hands-on sessions using technology such as a robotic surgery system and surgical simulators were included to better understand device use and constraints.

Results: Student pre- and post-program self-assessment surveys showed significant increases in four program-specific learning outcomes, five ABET learning outcomes, and four BME learning outcomes. Qualitative analysis of post-program self-reflection questions led to identification of themes including professional development, real world BME applications, design, clinical experience, career impacts, and broader point of view. BME senior capstone design project ideas were developed during the program, with an average of about 1.7 CI projects per year transitioning to the senior design course. Post-graduation survey results showed that CI program alumni found the program had notable career impacts and are primarily employed in the fields of biomedical products and healthcare.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates the positive impacts of a CI program on BME students, in both a six-week format and a seven-week format.

Purpose: Proficiency with consensus standards is essential for biomedical engineers to develop effective, safe, and compliant medical devices. Here, we describe a novel, standards-based module that enhances student ability to interpret, apply, and revise consensus standards through round-robin testing.

Methods: A hands-on learning module was designed and implemented in an upper-level biomedical engineering course. The curriculum incorporated the use of a custom-designed tensile testing device alongside a mock standard to introduce students to protocol development, standards revision, and real-world challenges in testing variability. Eight student teams conducted round-robin testing using devices configured with deliberate adulterations. Learning objectives (LO) include (1) defining round-robin testing, (2) interpreting a consensus standard, and (3) revising a consensus standard. Assessment included a Standard Revision Report and a post-module survey.

Results: From the post-module survey, students were only somewhat able to define round-robin testing (LO1; average score of 0.4/1). From the Standard Revision Report, teams reliably identified elements from the mock standard to apply for their own tensile testing (LO2; average score of 2.5/3). Also from the Report, teams reliably revised the mock standard to address the adulterations they found (LO3; average score 1.5/2). After the module, students reported confidence in extracting requirements from standards, applying them to verification testing, and identifying potential limitations in testing protocols. Moreover, students found the activity effective for increasing their confidence in preparing them for industry applications, though some suggested extending the module duration and improving instructional clarity for increased effectiveness.

Conclusion: This study describes the development and implementation of a standards-based module in biomedical engineering. Ultimately, students engaged in higher-order problem-solving and improved their understanding of standards implementation, testing variability, and collaborative verification processes. The findings suggest that this curriculum model could be expanded across engineering disciplines to enhance workforce preparedness in quality engineering and R&D roles.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43683-025-00200-x.

Challenge: In traditional design courses, prototyping is initiated after a problem has been identified, constraints have been defined, and multiple solutions have been conceived. Accordingly, students tend to narrowly perceive prototyping as a step toward a designated endpoint (e.g., building and testing a final product) rather than as a flexible method for expanding their understanding throughout a design project.

Novel initiative: We designed a "prototyping the need" exercise and piloted it in an undergraduate course focused on the early stages of the health technology innovation process. Students defined important questions about their unmet needs and then built models to help them explore the answers and deepen their understanding of the problem, the population it affects, and/or the desired outcome if the need is solved.

Reflection: The exercise provided students with the opportunity to build hands-on prototyping/modeling skills earlier than usual in the design process, expanded their understanding of prototyping as an exploratory tool, and strengthened their engagement and empathy. In this article, we describe the "prototyping the need" method, spotlight two student projects, and share lessons from the pilot.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43683-025-00198-2.

Background: As the number of BME clinical immersion experiences expands across university curricula, there is a growing opportunity for BME educators to share practical insights gained from implementing clinical immersion courses. Despite the growing scholarship exploring BME clinical immersions, a significant need for robust exploration remains as we work to understand the impact of such programs on student learning.

Purpose: To address this gap, the purpose of this work is to describe the design, implementation, and assessment of a BME course focused on clinical immersions in Service Member and Veteran healthcare environments.

Methods: We designed, implemented, and assessed student experiences in a new technical elective course in our undergraduate BME curriculum entitled Needs Identification in Healthcare. This paper analyzes data across the first three cohorts from students' needs identification experiences, including working in transdisciplinary teams and immersion in Veteran and Service Member healthcare environments. The program structure is described with key elements that include (1) immersion partner collaboration, (2) team-based immersion experiences, (3) needs-finding emphasis, (4) team-based engineering design experiences, and (5) immersion assessment and evaluation. Techniques for student assessment include quantitative and qualitative survey items for investigating the program structure, complementary roles of engineers and designers, needs-finding ability, overall immersion experience, training content, faculty support, team effectiveness, self-reflection, and professional development.

Results: Overall, students had a high appreciation for the clinical immersion experience and benefited from their participation in the course in terms of their ability to problem solve, identify healthcare-related needs of Veterans, communicate with patients and providers, and work effectively in transdisciplinary teams wherein complementary roles of engineers and designers are valued.

Conclusion: Structured clinical immersion experiences that incorporate transdisciplinary teams and scoped healthcare environments promote student learning and professional development.

Purpose: Empathy and incorporation of the voice of the customer (VoC) are important elements of the medical device design process, particularly when defining unmet needs and design criteria. However, limited approaches, beyond clinical immersion, have been described to teach biomedical engineering students these skills. Clinical immersion programs struggle with scalability. Our goals are to help students learn, through an accessible format, how to identify unmet clinical needs and develop design inputs that consider user needs, increase students' empathy for users of medical devices, and foster course engagement.

Methods: To introduce biomedical engineering students to VoC in a scalable way, we recorded interviews with patients, clinicians, and researchers who use medical devices. We refer to these interviews as "VoC videos." In this paper, we describe our process to create these VoC videos. We measured their efficacy through direct assessments of student work, pre- and post-course survey data, and focus groups with students.

Results: 37 VoC videos have been created and used across multiple years of a biomedical engineering course. We found that 1) students can use the VoC videos to inform their development of need statements and design inputs, 2) the VoC videos help students develop empathy for users of medical devices, and 3) the VoC videos foster engagement in course content.

Conclusion: The VoC videos serve as an effective educational tool to support student engagement, empathy, and design skills. The videos are available online for others to use, demonstrating scalability.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43683-025-00206-5.

Challenge: The biomedical engineering (BME) capstone design courses are traditionally offered in students' senior year. Students often feel underprepared for the hands-on biodesign and prototyping process. Also, capstone design projects are often provided by BME faculty, without students' input in needs finding and screening.

Novel initiative: A longitudinal and interdisciplinary biodesign internship course sequence (program) was developed and offered. This internship course has three components. Part I is offered in the fall semester of students' junior year, focusing on biodesign concept development and preliminary prototyping. Part II is offered in the spring semester of students' junior year, focusing on clinical observation and needs finding. Part III is a 6-week summer immersion program, where students work directly with clinicians and industry mentors to convert a valid clinical need into a biodesign project and initiate the bio-innovation process. Successful summer projects can be carried forward into students' senior year and become their senior design projects.

Reflection: Since the start of this program in 2018, 47 students participated in the program, which accounted for approximately 20% of the total number of students. More than 75% of the projects developed in the biodesign internship program were successfully carried into BME senior design and involved more than 60% of BME students in their senior design process. Students were satisfied with their biodesign internship experience. Other products of this program include conference presentations, peer-reviewed journal publications, provisional patents, patents, and design competition awards.

Clinical immersion programs provide opportunities for biomedical engineering (BME) students to observe the clinical environment and medical devices in use, often leading to the identification of unmet clinical needs. Due to hospital restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person clinical immersion programs were generally not possible in summer 2020. Therefore, a six-week virtual clinical immersion program ran that summer. The program included meetings with guest clinicians and medical device sales representatives twice per week, and a group discussion held once per week. The meetings incorporated de-identified videos of medical procedures, clinician commentary of the videos, live video tours of hospital areas, clinician presentations, presentations and demonstrations by medical device sales representatives, and opportunities for discussions with these guests. The meetings were recorded and saved to create a Virtual Clinical Immersion Library. Pre and post program student self-assessment surveys showed significant increases in five ABET learning outcomes, two BME learning outcomes, and four program-specific learning outcomes. Post-graduation survey results of alumni from this program showed that all respondents had secured a job in the biomedical/engineering field or postgraduate education less than three months after graduation. These alumni are currently employed in the fields of biomedical products, healthcare, research and development, higher education, biotech, consulting, pharmaceutical, and other engineering. Overall, this virtual clinical immersion program filled a gap caused by COVID-19 pandemic closures and provided many benefits to the students that participated. The virtual program also provides an enduring library of video resources for current and future BME students.

Purpose: In 2018, the Department of Bioengineering and the School of Nursing at University of Pittsburgh implemented an interdisciplinary partnership that integrated senior nursing students into the bioengineering capstone Senior Design course as part of a National Institutes of Health education grant. This two-semester course requires senior Bioengineering students to synthesize and extend principles from prior coursework toward the design a medical product meeting an unmet clinical need. Senior Design teams interact with clinicians, patients, and caregivers as part of the overall design process to understand the unique challenges of medical product design, including the requirements for regulatory approval. The teams develop iterative designs, fabricate prototypes, and perform both verification and validation testing to evaluate whether product performance criteria are met. Integrating nursing and bioengineering students was anticipated to provide opportunities for interprofessional learning, earlier and more frequent clinical input to the design process, and exposure to a spectrum of unmet clinical needs. Conversely, nursing students were anticipated to gain an understanding of the medical product design process, including regulatory requirements, to potentially empower future innovativeness.

Methods: The impact of this interdisciplinary partnership on the anticipated outcomes was assessed over a five-year timeframe using research surveys and student interviews. The design self-efficacy survey was administered in a pre-post manner to assess changes in bioengineering and nursing students' confidence, motivation, success expectancy, and apprehension for performing design activity. Students' interprofessional collaborative development was also measured in a retrospective pre-post manner using the interprofessional collaborative competency attainment survey. Finally, a spectrum of student interviews was conducted to obtain perspectives about the interdisciplinary partnership. The data were analyzed using statistical and qualitative data methods.

Results: The results were overwhelmingly positive for the partnership. The results make a strong case for such partnerships and suggest benefits for both student groups, including significant effects for design confidence and a multitude of collaborative competencies. For bioengineering students, the nursing students' clinical knowledge, perspectives, suggestions related to unmet clinical needs, and feedback were mentioned by 84% of interviewees as a partnership benefit. The nursing students cited interprofessional teamwork as the most valuable benefit (71% of interviewees) and indicated that it supported their ability to be innovative.

Conclusions: The results make a strong case for engineering and nursing schools to pursue and establish partnerships between their students. This study is situated in the literature as