The value of practical design experience in biomedical engineering education

描述（由申请人提供）：由于生物医学相关行业的快速增长，迫切需要为新兴劳动力提供适当的培训，这些劳动力将负责将新设备和技术从实验室转化为临床。学生需要接触研究、临床和工业环境，为生物医学工程的复杂性和多样性提供坚实的基础和理解。为了满足这一需求，我们建议扩大我们的6学分团队为基础的跨学科高级设计课程，包括在以前的临床沉浸体验中确定的临床动机项目。在设计项目的背景下，学生将识别未满足的临床需求的重要性和寻找实际解决方案的影响，概述设计约束，并生成一个工作原型作为未满足的临床需求的解决方案。本提案的目标是(a)将未满足的临床需求转化为开放式的、基于团队的高级设计项目，以提供真正从实验室到床边解决问题的机会；(b)扩大学生对临床环境特有挑战的接触和理解，同时加强与临床专业人员的沟通技巧；(c)评估将临床驱动设计项目纳入高级设计项目的有效性。最终，我们希望通过接触临床专业人员引导的开放式挑战，拓宽学生对生物医学领域的理解，创造有效的工程解决方案，以满足临床需求，并为学生从事生物医学工程职业做好准备。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Due to the rapid growth in biomedically related industries, there is a crucial need to provide appropriate training for the emerging workforce that will be responsible for translating new devices and technologies from the bench to the bedside. Students need exposure to research, clinical, and industrial environments to provide a solid foundation and understanding of the complex and diverse nature of biomedical engineering. To meet this need, we propose to expand our 6-credit team-based interdisciplinary senior design program to include clinically motivated projects identified during previous clinical immersion experiences. Within the context of the design project the students will identify the significance o the unmet clinical need and impact of finding a practical solution, outline the design constraints, and generate a working prototype as a solution to the unmet clinical need. The goals of this proposal are to (a) translate the unmet clinical needs into open-ended, team-based senior design projects to provide true bench-to-bedside problem solving opportunities, (b) broaden the students exposure and understanding of challenges that are specific to clinical environments while strengthening communication skills with clinical professionals, and (c) evaluate the effectiveness of the incorporation of clinically driven design projects into the senior design program. Ultimately we hope that exposure to guided but open-ended challenges from clinical professionals will broaden the students' understanding of the biomedical field, create effective engineering solutions to address clinical needs, and prepare students for careers in biomedical engineering.