Prof. Simon:
perhaps it will make more sense to say if I had not taken this course, I would unknowingly have passed up on a great learning experience as a Biomedical Engineer. It was critical to learn what the engagements of a Biomedical Engineer out in the field are while still a student. This knowledge is irreplaceable.
In this course, a Biomedical Engineering student is brought in directl contact with their engineering environment, they get involved in and are shown the processes therein. Just to site a few examples:
– the nature of the possible organizational setups: the functional, project-based, and the Matrix-type
organizational setup
– processes called into play whether they be (a) administrative or (b) regulatory
– the roles played by the engineer and understanding the relevant templates and documents maintained
– information on such practicalities as when to avoid trying to re-invent the wheel
– the very process of engineering a medical device:
: from proposal following pre-clinical and clinical studies (where applicable) through verification into
validation
: the various approaches adopted to place a medical device in the hands of a customer, and
: the different routes taken to have a medical device approved by a regulatory body depending on the
classification of the device
All of the above take out the fiction from the realities of the Biomedical Engineers’ activities in the field; thus placing the student engineer on the comfortable seat of an experienced engineer.

The Forum
Nothing quite like it elsewhere – a great learning resource to tap from on any biomedical engineering topic discussed. Like in the Matrix-type administrative organization silos are extinct. Here a field-experienced students love to share their knowledge and gently guide the in-experienced student engineers as they discuss various engineering concepts, and technical engineering problem solution tactics. Here students take ventures into exploring engineering problem resolutions.

We all believed Dr. Simon when he stressed at the very beginning of the course that he was not here to bust a student’s CGPA, rather that he was here to teach a student the realities of the engineer in the real world. This course builds maturity into a student such that the student moves from the childhood phase to the maturity phase when an engineer knows where and what they are standing on.

From this course, I see the engineer strives to produce the safest and most practical medical tools for the physician to employ in their everyday practice with the intent to help eliminate human health woes; but in real life the physician is not really interested in eliminating human health woes considering that all the physician wants to do is employ pharmaceutical drugs while they enrich themselves by billing the patients insurance companies. The physician knows the drug will not eliminate the ailment for which it is being prescribed. But the physician prescribes it any way. That the drug will fail to eliminate the patient’s problem guarantees the patient will return for more of the drug which give the physician another opportunity to bill the patient’s insurance company. This is the game the physician want to play while the Biomedical Engineer strives to provide more smart medical tools the physician can use in their practice.

Our body is designed to heal itself (repair damage it may have sustained). Only few physicians (like late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez) know this; i.e., only few physicians actually want to help a patient’s body heal (repair) itself. I.e., only this few physicians want to see a disease eliminated.

To really understand what I am actually saying it may be necessary to study the work of such physicians as late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and Dr. McMakin of Portland OR.

So, while the Biomedical Engineers work is striving to eliminate human health woes, the physician is going
in the opposite direction considering that their strive is to get richer on the backs of the patients that go to see them with their problems.

So there is a chasm between the Biomedical Engineers quest to help eliminate human health woes and the physicians pursuit for great wealth hinged on the patients’ need to get well.

Will this chasm ever get to disappear? There should be a course to examine this problem. Unless this chasm is eliminated, human suffering will never get taken out despite the Biomedical Engineers effort.

Dr. Simon, your course was the best.

Andrew Disame