NSERC CREATE 'Engineers in Scrubs' - Fostering Innovation in Medical Technology by Training Biomedical Engineers in the Clinical Environment

在复杂的技术应用领域，如医疗保健，工程师在技术上是不够的-他们需要深刻的经验理解和理解他们的技术用户的需求，以及他们的技术将被使用的环境，如果他们要在工程研究，医学研究，临床实践和产品开发之间的接口有效地工作。 我们从创新文献中了解到，我们必须明确促进新技术经常起源的学术实验室之间的紧密联系，对新技术的需求出现的临床环境以及产品开发初始阶段发生的小型医疗器械社区，以确保我们从研究实验室产生的见解中实现最大的利益。 因此，我们提出了一个“灌木工程师”（EiS）培训计划，其中生物医学工程学员在医院接受了很大一部分培训，并明确接受了医疗技术创新过程的培训和参与，包括多学科医疗技术设计经验，这将促进创造力，批判性思维以及学科之间的综合和整合，所有这些都是未来雇主非常需要的技能。 EiS计划的亮点将是在传统学年开始前的8月进行的为期一个月的临床世界密集介绍，随后是一个为期一年的跨学科设计项目，该项目与结构化和协作性问题识别和优先级排序过程紧密相关每年在我们的四个主要研究集群中进行生物医学工程在UBC。

In complex technology application areas such as healthcare, it is not enough for engineers to be technically competent - they need a deep experiential understanding and appreciation of the needs of the users of their technologies and the environment in which their technologies will be used if they are to work effectively at the interface between engineering research, medical research, clinical practise and product development. We know from the innovation literature that we must explicitly foster strong linkages between the academic laboratories where new technologies frequently originate, the clinical milieu in which the need for new technologies arises and the small medical device community where the initial stages of product development occur in order to ensure that we realize the greatest benefits possible from the insights generated in our research labs. We therefore propose an "Engineers in Scrubs" (EiS) training program in which biomedical engineering trainees do a significant portion of their training in the hospital and are explicitly trained in and participate in medical technology innovation processes, including a multidisciplinary medical technology design experience which will foster creativity, critical thinking and synthesis and integration between disciplines, all of which are skills highly desired by future employers. Highlights of the EiS program will be a month-long intensive introduction to the clinical world to be undertaken in the August just before the traditional start to the academic year, followed by a year-long interdisciplinary design project tightly linked to a structured and collaborative problem identification and prioritization process to be undertaken annually in each of our four major research clusters in biomedical engineering at UBC.