The Pros And Cons Of Medical Engineering

It is hard to imagine how life would be without all the medical advancements, medicines, and treatments that are available in 21st century. As I was learning about 20th and 21st century medicine, I was surprised to know the engineer’s role towards the medical field and it isn’t an understatement to say that, “Without the engineers, the health care system wouldn’t be this advanced”. It is not just the biomedical engineers, but also the other branches of engineers could be credited for their work with the physicians, nurses, therapists, and technicians to solve a wide variety of problems and create medical equipment, which made it a lot easier for medical professionals to increase the patient’s quality of life and life span by analyzing the disease and treating them with less pain.

Over the last 50 years, engineers have developed many medical technologies and instruments some of which include vaccinations, Lasers (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation), imaging technologies, and prosthetics/artificial organs. Each of these areas have had many advancements which are being highlighted here.

Diseases like the Hib disease, chicken pox, measles, polio, small pox, caused illness, death, or serious disabilities in the past. Biomedical engineers developed methods of mass producing the vaccines, eradicating most of these diseases from the U.S.

Lasers were a remarkable technical breakthrough. Electronic engineer Theodore Maiman invented the first optical ruby laser. Initially, surgeries with lasers were introduced to prevent blindness caused by diabetic retinopathy. Later, in 1964, another electronic engineer Kumar Patel discovered the carbon dioxide laser (CO2). The CO2 laser has been used widely to treat some types o...

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Within the next fifty years, we can anticipate genetic therapy and nano-robotic surgery to revolutionize the medical field. Genetic engineers can modify mutated genes and prevent birth defects and other genetic diseases. Nano-robotic surgery is soon to improve surgical procedures. Nanobots are as thick as four human hairs and it can get closer to a tumor than any other surgical instrument. Engineers can design the nanobot with tiny surgical tools/lasers and camera that will allow doctors to get a better look, at nanoscale resolution, and operate on tiny tumors at a cellular level making procedures more precise and safer. This allows surgeons to perform surgeries around sensitive areas, such as the brain or areas near the heart, with ease.

Engineers continue to research and come up with novel solutions to the medical problems we have today.