Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare applications. BME is also traditionally logical sciences to advance health care treatment, including diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy. Also included under the scope of a biomedical engineer is the management of current medical equipment in hospitals while adhering to relevant industry standards. This involves procurement, routine testing, preventive maintenance, and making equipment recommendations, a role also known as a Biomedical Equipment Technician (BMET) or as a clinical engineer.
The Pratt School of Engineering is located at Duke University in the United States. The school's associated research, education, alumni and service-to-society efforts are collectively known as Duke Engineering.
A medical device is any device intended to be used for medical purposes. Significant potential for hazards are inherent when using a device for medical purposes and thus medical devices must be proved safe and effective with reasonable assurance before regulating governments allow marketing of the device in their country. As a general rule, as the associated risk of the device increases the amount of testing required to establish safety and efficacy also increases. Further, as associated risk increases the potential benefit to the patient must also increase.
Biocompatibility is related to the behavior of biomaterials in various contexts. The term refers to the ability of a material to perform with an appropriate host response in a specific situation. The ambiguity of the term reflects the ongoing development of insights into how biomaterials interact with the human body and eventually how those interactions determine the clinical success of a medical device. Modern medical devices and prostheses are often made of more than one material so it might not always be sufficient to talk about the biocompatibility of a specific material.
Dr. Bill Dobelle was a biomedical researcher who developed experimental technologies that restored limited sight to blind patients, and also known for the impact he and his company had on the breathing pacemaker industry with the development of the only FDA approved device for phrenic nerve pacing. He was the former director of the Division of Artificial Organs at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.
Alfred E. Mann, also known as Al Mann, was an American physicist, inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
Biological engineering or bioengineering is the application of principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible, economically viable products. Biological engineering employs knowledge and expertise from a number of pure and applied sciences, such as mass and heat transfer, kinetics, biocatalysts, biomechanics, bioinformatics, separation and purification processes, bioreactor design, surface science, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and polymer science. It is used in the design of medical devices, diagnostic equipment, biocompatible materials, renewable energy, ecological engineering, agricultural engineering, process engineering and catalysis, and other areas that improve the living standards of societies.
Pacesetter Systems Inc. was a biotechnology company founded by Alfred E. Mann in 1965. The company manufactured various implantable medical devices invented by Robert Fischell and the rest of the team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Those inventions included the first commercial rechargeable implantable pacemaker, which was one of the first pacemakers to use radio waves for telemetry, and the implantable insulin pump. The insulin pump business was spun off into MiniMed in 1983 and then acquired by Medtronic in 2001. Pacesetter Systems Inc. was purchased by Siemens and then St. Jude Medical in 1994.
Morton Maimon Mower was an American cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology and the co-inventor of the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator. He served in several professional capacities at Sinai Hospital and Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. In 1996, he became the chairman and chief executive officer of Mower Research Associates. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for the development of the automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator with Michel Mirowski in the 1970s. He continued his research in the biomechanical engineering laboratories at Johns Hopkins University.
Alois A. Langer is an American biomedical engineer best known as one of the co-inventors of the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD).
William E. Bentley is the Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Professor of Engineering, founding Director of the Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, and currently the Director of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. He was previously the Chair of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, where he assisted in establishing the department and provided leadership that led to its nationally ranked status.
Biotronik is a limited partnership multi-national cardiovascular biomedical research and technology company, headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
Jozef Cywinski is a Polish-American scientist, a specialist in the field of biomedical engineering and specifically in electrical stimulation of living organisms. His work has been the subject of 12 patents, two books and over 100 scientific publications. He developed several first-on-the-market electro-medical devices like cardiac stimulators pacemakers, train-of-four nerve stimulators, PACS, EMS, TENS and Veinoplus calf pump stimulators.
The IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award is a Technical Field Award of the IEEE given annually for outstanding contributions to the field of biomedical engineering. It was established in 2010.
Elazer R. Edelman is an American engineer, scientist and cardiologist. He is the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and a practicing cardiologist at BWH. He is the director of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), the Harvard-MIT Biomedical Engineering Center, and the MIT Clinical Research Center. He is also the Program Director of the MIT Graduate Education in Medical Sciences program within the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
Lucas H. Timmins is an American biomedical engineer and currently an associate professor at Texas A&M University. He is active in the fields of computational and experimental biomechanics and the application of these research domains to address prevalent challenges in cardiovascular medicine.
Gerald E. Loeb is an American neurophysiologist, biomedical engineer, academic and author. He is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Pharmacy and Neurology at the University of Southern California, the President of Biomed Concepts, and the co-founder of SynTouch.
Alisa Morss Clyne is an American mechanobiologist. She is a Full Professor and Associate Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Clyne is an expert in endothelial cell biology, biomechanics, and metabolomics.
Donald Lad DeVoe is an engineer recognized for his contributions to the fields of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and microfluidics. He is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he serves as Associate Chair of Research and Administration in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is a Fischell Institute Fellow within the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, and holds affiliate faculty appointments in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland.
Amir Manbachi is an Iranian-born, Canadian-American academic and researcher, currently working as an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and known for his work in Medical Ultrasound. He is the co-founder and current director of HEPIUS Innovation Lab at Johns Hopkins University.
