Second major- Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical Engineering

The first major I started talking about was computer science, that I will continue talking about in the next blogs.

For the current one, I will talk about a major that combines engineering principles and techniques onto the medical techniques. This major is called biomedical engineering where the bioengineers work with doctors, therapists, and researches in order to develop equipments to solve clinical problems.

Importance of Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical Engineering is such an important major; the reason is that the health issues in the world are unsolved, the cost of health care is growing crazy, and controlling these prices is almost impossible. The easiest way to get over spending all the money on health care, is by creating some tools by bioengineers like : digital tools, software platforms, and hospital instruments.

Furthermore, biomedical engineering has different careers; a common career for this kind of engineering is making artificial limbs. These are for people who have lost their limbs or need to have an amputated (cut of a limb). So first of all engineers will design the structure to be similar to a human limb. To maintain a good quality in life for the person that uses it, the mechanical engineer aspect of this major should interfere.

Additionally, Biomedical engineering attaches electrode somewhere where the limb was removed to read the electronics signals when someone want to fist for example. Now once that person fist, electronics signals coming from his hand will proceed to a device that would tell the artificial arm to make a fist also. This aspect is called electronic engineering and programming aspect of the major.

For me, the most important part in biomedical engineering is the tissue engineering.

What's the tissue engineering?

The whole idea of tissue engineering is to form different types of tissues in the lab and maintain a long-term functionality. After creating these tissues it will be introduced to the body in order to replace or repair any damaged tissues. This may involves skin, muscles, or bone tissue. It can also involve the regeneration of an organ such as the heart, kidney or the Liver.

Nowadays, the organ donors can't keep up with demand. Because of that, organ replacement has become a major goal especially with all the wars around us. For all these reason, tissue engineers tries to imitate what nature does to create organs; this experiment involves engineering a kidney instead of using artificial scaffolds.

To do this, tissue engineers take a particular real tissue and carry out all the cells from it and leave only the collagen behind the scaffold. After this, all cells were put back on the scaffold and let the organ regenerate itself using the same architecture. Once the procedure succeeded, the tissue can be set in the body with the right environment.

Scaffolds : are used to support organs that may have been damaged after injury or disease.

Biomedical Engineer Salary

For those who are wondering about the salary that a biomedical engineer can make => the average salary is 63,500$ per year depending on the national average. This salary will differ by location. 

For the first five to ten years in this position, pay increases steeply, but any additional experience does not have a big effect on pay.