Managing new directions for a 38 year old undergraduate BME program

Abstract

The Biomedical Engineering curricula in general must reflect the state of the art in the technology related to medicine and health care, as students who graduate from these programs are directly related to the well-being of the patients, either through new devices and technologies being invented or through the application of their technical knowledge in the service industry. At present, there are more than 25 BME undergraduate programs in Mexico. Most of them are oriented towards the instrumentation and clinical engineering branches of the field, while a few others have strong components in signal analysis. The program at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) is one of the oldest and has been used as a reference by most other programs. Since UAM is one of the top three research universities in the country, it is well poised to incorporate its research directions into a more modern curriculum. This paper deals with the efforts that have been carried out in order to minimize the excessive influence of the electrical engineering subjects in the BME undergraduate curriculum and the approaches to reach consensus-based decisions to explore new directions related to emerging disciplines in medical technology and health care. After analysis of the current state, a discussion on future directions is presented.

Biomedical Engineering Education: Ukrainian Trajectory Through the Prism of World Experience. Status and Perspectives

“…Papers concerning the educational issues in the BME field, published for the last 15 years, prove the continuity of intensive discussing both global and regional tendencies and issues in this area. Note that such discussions are initiated by experts from the developed countries [2][3][4][5][6][7] as well as from the developing ones [8][9][10][11][12][13]. This issue is also of great interest in Ukraine [14,15].…”

“…Публікації з проблем освіти у галузі БМІ за останні 15 років свідчать про продовження інтенсивного обговорення як глобальних, так і регіональних тенденцій і проблем у цій сфері. Зазначимо, що ініціюють такого роду дискусії фахівці як із розвинутих країн [2][3][4][5][6][7], так і з країн, що розвиваються [8][9][10][11][12][13]. Ця тема є актуальною і для України [14,15].…”

“…Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated December,13, 2006 No. 1719 "On the list of fields of study, according to which the training of students of higher educational establishments on the academic level of bachelor is conducted".3 Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated August, 27, 2010 No.…”