Last Prompted Post: Synthesiss/Conclusion

Through this project I have discovered the scope of influence biomedical engineers have on the medical field. They build all the instruments that doctors use for their jobs. There are also tons of different options within the realm of biomedical engineering. They make a big enough impact to be ranked as the best job in America in 2012. I have learned a lot about the field in the last many weeks. the possibilities of this specialization of engineering is seemingly endless and has so many ways to help the progression of medicine.

                The medical field is heavily dependent on biomedical engineers. They create most everything that doctors use to treat patients. Biomedical engineers build devices that help doctors diagnose and treat patients. Some examples of these inventions are the camera pill that I have talked about and machines that can scan for cancer and try to eradicate it. The definition of biomedical engineering is “The applications of engineering to two categories: the engineering study of the human body in health and disease, and the development of engineering instrumentation and devices for medical research and practice” (Boddy). This means that biomedical engineers have an impact in nearly every medical advancement, in technology and processes. That is incredibly important as healthcare is an important field because it keeps us healthy and giving people more comfort for more days at the end of their lives.

                Another thing I learned was that there is a lot of variety in the kinds of things biomedical engineers actually do. There are some that need to know how the body works in order to make better and better devices for implementation in the body or to mimic the body’s movements for things like the eLEGS. Others might need to know much more computer science to create robots to assist with surgeries. And there are virtually infinite specializations that engineers can have. This makes it seem like a great profession because there is so much variety. There is a specialization for everybody who might want to pursue the profession.

One thing I learned about this field is that it is ranked as the best job to have in the United States (Best Jobs in America). This rank really makes a lot of sense. These engineers pretty much have it made, they know their work helps people get better or help doctor’s lives easier, they get a nice pay check and they have it relatively easy as far as stress goes. The worst part of the job is that they constantly have to catch up with technological advancements.

It makes sense however that engineers have to keep up with technology to make the best products. It is a field on the cutting edge of technology. That is one of the principle reasons I was drawn to the field in the first place. I liked learning about all the gadgets biomedical engineers make and that is why I focused so heavily on these gadgets during my free posts. I think throughout this project I have done a good job at writing lots about my opinions and my reflections on the things I have learned about. It is one of the main pieces of all of nearly all my posts. However I think I could have structured my thoughts better in my posts. I also think my posts could have been better if I had included pictures or graphics in my posts. When I went in I didn’t know anything about biomedical engineering. Through the course of this blog I have learned that the biomedical field is an incredibly important technologically driven field with so many varieties. There are so many ways to help people in this field. My next big project for myself will be figuring out which direction I will decide to take.

Works cited

Boddy, K., J. M. Courtney, J.D. S. Gaylor, T. Gilchrist, T.G. Grassie, and R.M. Kendi. A Textbook of   Biomedical Engineering. Ed. R. M. Kendi. Glaslow: Blackie, 1980. Print.

“Best Jobs in America”. CNN Money. Cable News Network. 29 October 2012. Web 13 October 2013.

Free Post 10: Robots Preforming Surgery

Imagine that you have a big surgery coming up. Now imagine it wouldn’t be doctors preforming the surgery. Now how do you feel? Would it change anything if you found out that your surgery would be carried out entirely by robots? Whether you like it or not this is a reality. Robots have completed an entire surgery including the anesthesiology. The robots put the patient to sleep and very precisely conducted a surgery removing the prostate of a patient. The use of robots is so that doctors can provide more accurate and precise surgical maneuvers. Dr Hemmerling, one doctor at the hospital that the robotic surgery occurred, said “Robots will not replace doctors but help them to perform to the highest standards” (Bates). The doctor said this to assure reporters that robotics will not replace human doctors. I think that doctors are necessary for many reasons. A doctor is needed to make diagnosis. I don’t think a robot could make correct diagnosis as often as an actual doctor. I think that to make some diagnosis there must be some ability to look at different information and make a diagnosis. It doesn’t seem like a robot could be able to interpret things such as bodily information, at least not for a long time in the future. I do think robots could be used very effectively to complete surgeries. Robots can make more accurate incisions that a human could never do. So I think robots are going to be a very important part of most surgeries in the future. However I think having an actual doctor in the room is going to be an important thing for a while as well I think problems can still occur during surgery, even if every part of the surgery is perfect. If a problem occurs will the robots be able to assess the situation and fix the problem? That is why I think doctors will not be replaced by robots. But it is great that robots can help with making surgeries better and better.

Works Cited

Bates, Clair. “Patient has prostate removed in world's first all-robotic surgery”. Mail Online. Associated Newspapers LDT. 20 Oct 2010. Web. 10 Nov 2013.

Prompted Post 10: Remix

The final prompted post for this blog asked to find a source of information by a professional. I found a video on YouTube where a biomedical engineering professor, named Marybeth Privitera, talked about traits that are necessary for biomedical engineers to possess. She talked about hoe creativity was actually one of the more important things a biomedical engineer can have. She said that they need this skill in order to produce new ideas to bolster the field of innovation. This interview tries to invent the idea that creativity is a very important part of being an engineer. The arrangement of this was in the form of a few answers to some questions an interviewer was asking Privitera. This video develops the idea that creativity is important by showing how it is so important not just saying that it is. If her responses were to be revised I imagine she might try and add even more back up and reasoning about how creativity is a necessity to have for engineers. The way she speaks has a style that emulates that she knew what she was talking about but she often seemed to struggle over the right words to use.

                This interview was most likely aimed at trying to appeal to college students or prospective college students. Its purpose is to try to tell the audience that the field of biomedical engineering deeply respects and actually requires creativity to keep the field as innovative as possible. I think that this interview could have been more successful with the message it relays. It seemed that it was not really so much the focus of the video and rather just the answer to the questions that were being asked.

Works Cited

“BMES IdeaLab 2011, Marybeth Privitera talks about creativity and biomedical engineering”. BMESociety. YouTube. YouTube. 28 June 2011. Web. 10 Nov 2013

Free Post 9: eLEGS

For my free post this week I found another invention off of a list of the 10 best biomedical inventions. I chose to look into something called eLEGS. I found the projects main sight and instead of reading about it I decided to mix things up and watch a video about the project instead. These legs are a robotic exoskeleton that can help a paralyzed person to walk. The bulk of the system is in a backpack type thing then there are long pieces that connect to large knee pieces then again down to the bottom of the feet. Once into the suit you would be able to stand on the feet and, with the aid of walkers, a person can walk. John Fogalin, who worked on the project, was excited about how this project encompassed lots of different fields. He said “It’s an integration of so many interesting talents: Mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, programing, control, and when you bring all those together, that’s when you get a really innovative product” (Berkly Bionics). I think that the fact that this was a joint project between multiple disciplines was one of the cooler parts of this project. It is cool that so many different people came together to make such an amazing invention. The best thing about this project is that people who had lost their ability to walk now have hope that they can regain a majority of their movement. It must be so hard to be somebody who is healthy and mobile and then experience an accident that leaves you without the use of your legs. This invention can help bring people their lives back.

Work Cited

“Berkley Bionics: Introducing eLEGS”. Berkley Bionics. YouTube. YouTube. 6 Oct 2010. Web. 7 Nov 2013

Prompted Post 9: Importance of Biomedical Engineering.

This week I had to find an article on the internet discussing the importance of my field. The article I found discussed the importance of biomedical engineering in Asia. The article talks a lot about biomedical engineering as a whole before it delves into the topics I was looking for. The article shifts and begins discussing the importance of biomedical engineering in Asia. First it talks about how many institutions in Asia are now offering this subject as a major. Then the article talks about the many applications of biomedical engineering in the area. In places such as china an increase in professionals in this area of study is somewhat of a necessity. The article states, “an aging population and change in lifestyles have resulted in new diseases” (Importance of Biomedical Engineering in Asia). This means that more biomedical engineers are needed to make products and screening techniques to evolve China’s knowledge of medicine to keep up with their transition in disease prevalence due to their relatively recent industrial shift.

                This article shows how the Asian countries are in need of biomedical engineers. But it isn’t just Asian countries that need biomedical engineers; the whole world needs them to make medicine easier and more effective. The more engineers there are in the world the more brains can be put to the task of creating great inventions that will make tons of people’s lives that much easier. There is so many things that biomedical engineers can do to make people’s lives easier. They can prolong people’s lives so they can spend their last days with more comfort and make other products that can make it so that people can walk again after their leg has been amputated. Biomedical engineering is instrumental to the world of medicine.

Work Cited

“Importance of Biomedical Engineering in Asia”. Asia-Pacific Business and technology Report. Asia-Pacific Business and technology Report. 1 Aug 2010. Web. 7 Oct. 2013

Free Post 8: Camera Pills

An in ordinate amount of my “Free Posts” have been about cool inventions that fix problems in the body mainly though putting things into patients. But that is only part of the job of a biomedical engineer another big part is making it easier to spot these problems. That is why for this free post I will be talking about a pill. Only this isn’t a pill with medicine in it. It is a camera.

                This idea of swallowing a camera was made to screen for esophageal cancer. There are 2 different versions of this design. There are regular pills that can take fly by shots and is then passed through the body. The other method is a little bit more invasive. In the second method the pill is tethered so a doctor can move it up and down to get a better view of target areas.  The first patient who had this method tested on said that it “felt like swallowing a regular pill” (Camera In A Pill Offers Cheaper, Easier Window On Your Insides). The test subject swallowed the camera and the tether did not bother him. By using this screening technique patients don’t have to undergo anesthesia for esophageal cancer screening. This is because previously the screening techniques used were much more invasive and couldn’t be conducted easily on a conscious patient.

                One of the reasons I like doing this blog is because I like reading about really cool inventions. This is definitely an example of something I think is really cool. I think that this is a great example of one way that biomedical engineers have made the healthcare field better. There are a lot of problems that I have heard about in dealing with anesthesia and people can be very scared of being put under. So a process that can do the same things without the need for anesthesia sounds like a good step forward to me. I wonder if down the road it would ever be made practical to do surgeries without total anesthesia. The idea of being awake while surgery is being performed is scary to me, I am just wondering if science could make that happen at some point.

Work Cited

"Camera In A Pill Offers Cheaper, Easier Window On Your Insides."ScienceDaily. University of Washington. 25 Jan. 2008. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.

Free Post 8: Hands-on Activity

For this week’s post I was instructed to find a hand-on activity. However, this proved to be very difficult to do since work in this field is rather complicated.  My best opportunity for   doing something hands on happened last weekend when my cousin was in town. He mentioned he had some work to do and I asked if I could watch, sort of like job shadowing. This cousin of mine was the same one who I interviewed several weeks ago for another post in this class.

                The work my cousin had to get done was finishing up a design for a new product concept for his company. His work was done by using a program on his computer that made designing 3 dimensional objects very easy. I was partially familiar with the program because I had used a very similar version in a drafting class I took in high school. I am sure I made his work take much longer than it should have because I asked so many questions. But I am (pretty) sure he didn’t mind.

                I know that my cousin is not a biomedical engineer, but biomedical engineers still have to make designs for their products just like my cousin does. I know there are lots of differences in the smaller details that I missed out on but I did get some insight into the precision that engineers put into their work.  My cousin spent several minutes debating on how to fit 2 components of a motor together within certain ranges of space that could be allowed in this project. I think this is one of a few observations I made that would be hard to make just from talking to him about his job. Perhaps you could tell that their job has to be very precise, but you don’t really have a firm understanding of this before you see an engineer move pieces centimeters to make a large difference in various areas of the design.