How Is Biomedical Engineering Enhancing the Quality of Healthcare?

 

 

Globally, India holds the 145th rank for its quality and accessibility of healthcare which is insufficient for a highly populated country. Quality of health care is determined by the quality of medical equipment, infrastructure, and training given to healthcare physicians. Technical resources and advanced medical devices are needed to enhance healthcare quality. It is always a challenge for developing countries to allocate the required budget to improve healthcare quality. Research must be done to converge medical sciences and engineering to bring innovation. 

India must adopt a new strategy and begin its research in Biomedical Engineering. Biomedical Engineering is the application of engineering principles to life sciences. Biomedical Engineers implement their biology and engineering knowledge to create new medical equipment, software, and devices.

Biomedical Engineers develop new diagnostic tools based on safety standards. They blend their medical science and engineering knowledge to design specialised equipment for limb replacements and artificial organs.

 

What Biomedical Engineers Do?

Biomedical engineers learn human anatomy and biology and train in the technologies necessary for developing medical devices. They develop specialised software for analysing a patient's body. They create new drugs and sophisticated machinery for treating patients. They work in hospitals and clinics to supervise the maintenance of medical equipment. Medical engineer jobs are dynamic and extend to many domains like bioinformatics, bio instrumentation, bio-nano-engineering, biomechanics, biophotonics, etc.

 

Importance of Biomedical Engineering in Healthcare

 

Biomedical engineering plays a major role in the design and development of medical aids for diagnosing patients. Wearable devices are one of the most popular biomedical engineering marvels of the 21st century.  Other applications include the VR tool which makes 3D views of internal organs; robotic surgeons that assist doctors etc. Currently, research is underway to create nanorobots that can enter the bloodstream and deliver essential drugs or tissues.

 

Tissue Engineering

Tissue engineering is a specialised field in biomedical engineering. It involves the assembly and reconstruction of damaged tissues or vital organs. A scaffold and biologically-active molecules are combined to maintain or rejuvenate a damaged tissue or organ. The field has evolved to accommodate the growing number of patients for organ transplantation. Nowadays, a 3D-engineered tissue model is created and diagnosed rather than using animal models or existing models. Tissue engineering blends the knowledge of chemistry, medicine, materials science and molecular biology.

 

Microbubble

Microbubbles are tiny bubbles of size 0.5–10 μm used to deliver drugs to a particular site. The microbubbles used ultrasound technology to move inside the body. Physicians could treat the damaged cells without affecting other tissues using this technology.

 

Transdermal Patches

With advancements in medical engineering, scientists have created transdermal patches filled with drugs. These patches inject drugs directly into the tissues by adhering to the skin. These patches use hundreds of biodegradable microneedles to deliver drugs into the bloodstream. It is painless and can inject the right dosage for a particular period. As the needle dissolves, the drugs slowly enter the bloodstream.

These are some biomedical engineering applications that have improved the quality of healthcare. With rapid advancements in medical technology, bioengineers have made the treatment of challenging diseases possible. Nowadays, bioengineers use a 3D living tissue model to check the response of tissues. 

 

Career as a  Biomedical Engineer

 

It is predicted that the career opportunities for biomedical engineering will rise by 7% from 2016 to 2026. Anyone with an engineering background can take medical engineering courses and become a biomedical engineer. As an engineer, you have the opportunity to create an impact in the healthcare industry. Becoming a biomedical engineer is one of the top choices. According to Payscale, India's medical engineer's salary is about ₹3,62,858 per annum. After completing a medical technology course, any fresher can expect a base pay of INR 20000–30000 per month in India. 

Biomedical Engineering plays a significant role in ideating and innovating to provide better health care. About 45% of recorded deaths in 2020 were due to the inadequacy of healthcare. As per MIT News, Biomedical Engineering is the third revolution in medical research. You can start your research in the Biomedical field with a medical technology course. Over 1400 Biomedical Engineers have to be recruited every year to provide quality patient care. Medical engineering is the only proven solution to enhance health care quality.