Biomedical Engineering - As a career option

Medical science has come a long way from the times when doctors had to rely on their instincts to make crucial medical diagnoses. The fact that Medicare today is as technically advanced as it is, is a great example of the effect that biomedical engineers have on society.
Biomedical engineers are the people who bring engineering into medical science and develop everything from therapeutic equipment to testing tools. Have you ever wondered who developed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the bionic arms, or chemotherapy? Well, you know now!

Eligibility Criteria to Become a Biomedical Engineer

• +2: Have to graduate in the science stream with an aggregate 60%.
• Bachelor’s Degree: Bachelor of Technology in Biomedical Engineering
• Master’s Degree: Master of Technology in Biomedical Engineering (Optional)

How to Become a Biomedical Engineer?

Because the work that biomedical engineers do are not always eminent in everyday life (unless you’re chronically ill), people often forget the monumental role they play in our society. This is perhaps the reason why biomedical engineering isn’t as sought-after a career as are electronics or mechanical engineering.

However, this is great news for you if you are interested in the discipline! Don’t get us wrong – it’s not easy to get into the nation’s top B.Tech in Biomedical Engineering programs, and you still have to study hard!

Before you start applying for entrance exams or colleges, do some background research because not every college in the nation offers a degree in biomedical engineering.

Unlike many other engineering disciplines, biomedical engineering surprisingly researches and design oriented. While much progress has been made in medical science, science and technology are yet to come close to conquering the human body.

Hence, most biomedical engineers end up getting higher degrees.

M.Tech in Biomedical Engineering and PhD degrees in fields peripheral to biomedical engineering are abundant, and the research you can do is nothing short of breath-taking! Once you have a specialization, employment is abundant and lucrative.

A Day in the Life of a Biomedical Engineer

Hi, I work in one of the leading research laboratories in the country and work as part of a team that’s trying to develop a mechanism to detect and treat infectious diseases in human fetuses. The work is enthralling and I’m sure it’ll delight you. Come along!

9:00 AM: I reach the lab. The first thing I do is check last night’s samples. The samples are from my last experiment on fetuses of lab rats with congenital syphilis.

I am trying to ensure that a recently developed technique for detecting and treating the disease from our institution is working reliably and producing reproducible evidence.

11:00 AM: I’m at the desk now, reviewing the literature concerning fetal drug delivery for the hundredth time. Because barely any research has been done that deals exclusively with my topic, I have to deal heavily with similar peripheral projects, and this makes it very easy for one to miss crucial information even after long surveys.

1:00 PM: After lunch, I go back to the lab and start afresh experiment with my colleague. Here’s what we do – first, we inject the syphilis bacteria, Treponema Palladium, into the veins of a female laboratory rat.

Then, we wait long enough for the tell-tale signs of syphilis to become evident in its earliest stages in the rat’s anatomy.

Then, we allow it to mate. As the rat grows pregnant, it's fetus gets syphilis transmitted to it while still in the uterus.

We then proceed to treat both the mother and her baby for the illness, but while the mother’s condition is easily treated in the present times, the fetus is not affected by drugs in her bloodstream. Here’s where I come in!

3:00 PM: After the setup of next week’s experiment is over, it’s time to work on another sample. Here, I use a novel fetal drug delivery technique developed by our institution to take a cell sample from the fetus still inside the mother’s womb without breaking its skin with needles or other equipment.

This technique, while already adopted and even in use in some foreign countries, is yet to be brought into the purview of the Indian parent because the technology isn’t ours and is very expensive to purchase in bulk.

As I do it, the process is monitored in detail through highly efficient and manoeuvrable cameras.

4:00 PM: That’s done, then. In two days, my colleague, who is an immunologist, will dissect the fetus I worked on today and determine the extent to which our test is accurate. Yesterday’s cultures – the one I looked at in the morning – have not given accurate results.

So far, our technology, while working more than 60% of the time, fails to accurately predict syphilis in fetuses for the remaining experiments. It is going to be a challenge to hone the technique to be more effective, failing which it can’t be put to use in humans.

6:00 PM: Our supervisor, a chief scientist at the lab, is only available after common working hours and we have to meet him at least once a week for guidance.

My colleague and I are sitting outside her office right now, with reports from all the work we’ve done last week. Hopefully, she’ll see a pattern in the results that we’re not, or direct us to a new course of action.

Are you interested in both medical as well as engineering? Then this might be the profession for you. We hope this article has added something valuable to your search for Biomedical Engineering. Have your say in the comment box below. Enjoy Reading!