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Individual assignment 1: My Biomedical Engineering Competences

The course Technology for Health is offered as part of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) program. The
fact that you are one of the participating students indicates that you have chosen to pursue a career
in Biomedical Engineering or are at least interested to learn more about key aspects of biomedical
engineering and the role of the biomedical engineer in society. It also means that you already have
some knowledge, skills, opinions, and attitudes about Biomedical Engineering. The purpose of this
assignment is to support you in completing and maintaining your view on the continuously developing
Biomedical engineering discipline, and your own professional development.

Briefly answer the following questions by sharing your initial thoughts:

1. How would you describe your future role as a Biomedical Engineer in society?

I see myself working at Siemens improving the lives of patients through the design of instruments and
other devices.

2. What would you indicate as ‘need to have’ competences to fulfill this role?

I believe that in general, a biomedical engineer needs to know the basics of three main pillars:
medicine, engineering, and fundamental sciences. On the other hand, for medical device design, I think
it is important to have knowledge on materials, basic anatomy and physiology of human body, and
knowledge in useful softwares such as COMSOL, Abaqus, 3D slicer, inventor, fusion 360, OpenSim. It
may also be a plus to know about programming and electronics. Other key competences are critical
thinking, problem solving and analytic skills, creativity, and effective communication.

3. Which of these competences do you consider as your strengths and which competences
do you want to develop more? Before or after your graduation?

I have knowledge in useful softwares and materials. I have analytic skills and critical thinking. Before
my graduation I would like to develop my knowledge in electronics and effective communication and
after my graduation I would like to learn more about programming cause even though I know the
basics, it would be useful to improve my skills on it.

Individual assignment 2: Healthcare Problem Analysis

As a Biomedical Engineer you will develop technological solutions for healthcare problems. But what
exactly do we mean by ‘health’ and ‘healthcare’? At what level do these problems exist and who would
be the ‘problem owner’? The patient? The clinician? The society? Or should all these levels be
considered when describing a healthcare problem? How would technological solutions impact a
healthcare problem at these levels? This purpose of this assignment is to structure your thinking about
healthcare problems along presently used concepts and lines of reasoning.

Considering the three levels on which healthcare problems can exists, as mentioned above, briefly
answer the following questions by sharing your initial thoughts:

1. What aspects of a healthcare problem do you think are important to describe on each
level?

Individual level cares about a person’s level of functioning, individual treatment planning, evaluation
of treatment and other interventions, communication among health works and community agencies.

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Institutional level cares about educational and training purposes, resource planning and development,
quality improvement, management, outcome evaluation and how cost-effective are the services
provided.

Finally, social level cares about social security benefits, disability pensions, workers’ compensation and
insurances.

2. Which level will be most impacted by technical solutions envisioned or developed in your
BME track?

The individual level

3. Does that mean that the other levels are irrelevant for the research in your BME track?
Why?

No, all levels are important since all may get impacted by solutions developed. However, they may get
impacted indirectly or in a minor way.

Individual assignment 3: Technology Research

As a Biomedical Engineer you will (actively or passively) work on the development of technological
solutions for healthcare problems by advancing the present state of the art based on new ideas from
yourself or from others. These ideas might arise in the mind of people with various expertise as a result
of analysis, exploration, discoveries or even serendipity. In the mind of biomedical engineers, usually
many ideas pop-up and most ideas need further development and validation until proof of their
feasibility and added value is obtained. However, each development step will require expenses of
limited resources, like time, money, material and facility use. From a company/institute or societal
perspective, it should be worthwhile spending these resources meaning that these expenses should
be effective as well as efficient in solving the healthcare problem at stake. Hence, an overall desire
exist to actively guide or even take control over the technology development process by defining a
strategy and a roadmap of (sub)goals, development actions and decision points. Such strategies play
an important role in the allocation of resources for technology development and in many case you are
not the one who decides. The purpose of this assignment is to explore various concepts and models
that are used for guiding and controlling technology development processes.

Briefly answer the following questions by sharing your initial thoughts:

1. Do you think a technology development process can be guided or even controlled, e.g. by
proper process management? Why?

Yes, because process management can improve the quality of work and operational efficiency during
the development of a new technology. It is necessary to have stages in a development process such
as, designing, modelling, implementing, monitoring and optimizing and this type of processes are
crucial to enterprise success.

2. In your opinion, how important are exploration, creativity, discovery, and serendipity for
the technology development process leading towards technological solutions for
healthcare problems? How are these compatible with a tightly controlled technology
development process?

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This are all necessary competences when developing a new technology. However, when they are not
controlled, they tend to be unrealistic and fail. Taking into account this, having a development process
may not be compatible at all but it may guide this competences in a good direction.

3. How would you describe ‘success’ and ‘failure’ of a technology development process?
What do you think are major determinants for success or failure of a technology
development process towards an envisioned healthcare problem?

The major determinants would be the available resources for the development of the technology, such
as money and materials. A failure occurs when no users neither investors are interested in supporting
the project. On the other hand, a success is not necessarily a technology that comes onto the market,
but rather one that is being researched and advanced so that it can be used in the future.

4. What does it take to convince yourself that it is worth the efforts to pursue an idea? And
to convince others, e.g. future users, policy makers, decision takers?

When you observe the user and find a problem, no matter how small, it is the satisfaction of helping,
of making things easier for them, that really inspires you to continue with the project. Also, I think it is
very important to be clear about who is interested, who you want to reach, who is going to sell this
technology, if it is profitable, among other things. When you are aware of all these details, it is much
easier to convince anyone

Individual assignment 4: Technology Transfer

As a biomedical engineer it is your aim that the results of your work will be actually used for improving
the healthcare practice. This means that the technology you develop becomes available as a product
or service which generates value for the patient, the clinician or hospital and/or for the healthcare
delivery system as a whole. However, in most cases you are not the person that will cover the full
development and process from initial idea to fully matured and adopted technology. More often, your
work will be part of a chain of developments and developers. On each link of this innovation chain, a
decision will be made about taking the results of the previous link as a starting point for further
development and these decisions will be based on the perspectives on innovation and diffusion, i.e.
valuable (commercial) application by (many) final users of the healthcare technology. The purpose of
this assignment is to explore various aspects of technology transfer towards healthcare innovation.

Briefly answer the following questions by sharing your initial thoughts:

1. What do you think is necessary to promote that results from biomedical technology
development activities end up as innovative technological solutions for healthcare
problems?

First, it is important to validate the need with research and data to build at least one relevant
application and finding a typical user may be important too. It is also necessary to test feasibility of the
technological solution proposed and identify a market response to see if it would succeed in the future.

2. What would that mean for the planning and content of activities and decisions during this
development process?

Considering that not everyone works in everything, it is necessary that each group belonging to the
chain has a basic knowledge of what was stated above. This, so that when planning they make sure to
make the right decisions to make the technology innovative.

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 3. What competences would you need to take your role as a part of the development chain
from idea to final healthcare innovation?

Mainly, organization and communication are essential when doing chain work. In addition, having the
necessary knowledge to develop the technology and test its operation