Looking around at Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering program curricula at the BS and MS levels, I noticed that generally, the bioengineering courses applied traditional engineering concepts to biological systems at large. With regard to biomedical engineering courses, I noticed that those programs typically applied the traditional engineering concepts specifically toward medical applications, such as medical devices and diagnostic instrumentation.

Georgia Tech (GaTech) & Emory PhD Bioengineering:

If I had a longer life and the will to acquire 2 PhDs, I would absolutely attend the GaTech-Emory BioE program:

Advantages:

• If you have a clear research focus or product to be developed this program offers personalized course selection based on the student's research interest. 
• The benefit of faculty from two research 1 institutions. This created greater opportunities for funding, publications, professional networking, and a diversified or high specialize research portfolio.
• Qualifying exam January of 2nd year

Disadvantage

• The student must have  a highly focused research interest, and not many PhD students begin their program with a fully outlined research interest. 
• Not a joint GT and Emory degree

Courses:

• Integrative core - 0 hours
• Biological/biomedical - 9 hour
• Engineering - 9 hours
• Math - 3 hours
• Technical electives - 12 hours
• Minor - 9 hours
• Advanced seminar - 0 hours
• Total credit hours - 33 hours

Conversely, GaTech and Emory offer a PhD in Biomedical Engineering

Advantages:

• The benefit of faculty from two research 1 institutions. This created greater opportunities for funding, publications, professional networking, and a diversified or high specialize research portfolio.
• The ability to have a broad research focus.
• Joint GT and Emory degree

Disadvantages:

• Qualify exam May of 1st year

Courses:

• Integrative core - 6 hours
• Biological/biomedical - 18 hour
• Engineering - 0 hours
• Math - 3 hours
• Technical electives - Optional
• Minor - 9 hours
• Advanced seminar - 3 hours
• Total credit hours - 34 hours

Well said, JOnyekwere.

Bioengineering deals a lot with the cultivation of biological products, such as those used in the pharmaceutical/biologics industries, and not so much the medical device field.  However, as things advance the field of medical device development is overlapping these other aspects.  There are combination products that could be both device and biologic in nature, or even drug-device-biologic combinations.

Can you find any like this?

shfrancis, I would do more PhD's too if I could.  However, either one of those would open a lot of doors.

Hi Dr. Simon,

I think the drug-eluting vascular stent is a great example of a combination therapy and the overlap between bioengineering and biomedical engineering. Stents, commonly applied as vascular scaffolding, run the risk of forming clots in the blood vessels in which they are deployed. Engineering a stent that releases anti-coagulant biomolecules over time allows one to reap the medical benefits of a stent, with the dramatically lowered risk of complications that present in the form of blood clots.

After searching the internet for course requirements of Biomedical Engineering and also Bioengineering we see that there is a more technical term when using Biomedical Engineering. It seems that the concepts of engineering are applied to the field of medicine and biology to promote problem solving(I.e biomechanics, biotransports,) for example the creation of a prosthetic eye. Where as Bioengineering would be the studying of cellular, tissue and molecular engineering. In Bioengineering would be making artificial organs or the genetic modification of microorganisms. 

Bioengineering applies traditional  engineering techniques. bio engineering is the application of engineering principles to living structures such as  creating artificial organs, chemical.

Biomedical engineering focus on how cells, organs and systems function in the human. Biomedical Engineering uses concepts and principles for design, calibrate medical devices and equipment in the hospitals.

Bio-engineering is more broad than biomedical engineering, it applies the engineering concepts at the biological field like farming, and pharmaceuticals.

Biomedical engineering focuses on the applications of engineering principles at the medical area, such as medical devices, and prosthetic.

With varying health issues arising everyday, there is a need for personalised healthcare for affected individual. To provide a viable solution Bio-Engineering deals at the cell-tissue level of organs to study their molecular and structural composition. Some of the courses offered in Bio engineering level are Cellular and Molecular bio engineering, Micro-fluidic devices, Protein and genetic engineering. Whereas the biomedical engineering coursework includes Diagnostic devices, Radiological equipment's, BioMEMS and nano devices. 

The overlapping outcome of these studies gives rise to combination products which helps provide personalised healthcare. FDA defines combination products as therapeutic and diagnostic products that combine drugs, devices, and/or biological products.

Biomechanical Engineering/Bioengineering : Biomechanical engineering, also called Bioengineering, is the engineering discipline that is usually recognized as a subset of Biomedical engineering. This is basically a research oriented field in which the activities are carried out using the principles in physical sciences in order to create a better understand in biological systems. The field is the application of various engineering principles to the living structures.

Biomedical engineering: Biomedical engineering is the more broadly encircling field which includes the improvement of engineering solutions that is applied to both biological and clinical fields. Biomedical field is a recently emerged independent engineering discipline compared to others. This field can be said as bridge between the engineering and medicine. It integrates the design concepts and problem solving skills in the engineering field with medicine and life sciences for the development of healthcare diagnosis, therapy and monitoring.

Key difference between biomedical and biomechanical engineering:

Biomedical engineering is the field which implements the engineering principles to the life sciences whereas Biomechanical or Bioengineering involves the application of engineering principles to the movements of living things.

Biomedical engineering is the field which seeks to fill the gap between engineering and medicine whereas the Biomechanical engineering applies its concepts and design to create various products that are useful for the biological systems.

Even though Biomedical engineering and Biomechanical engineering deals in the same field, they are at poles apart.

Bioengineering and biomedical engineering are two important advancements if the field of science and technology. Bioengineering focuses on the application of engineering on biological processes, food, agriculture and environmental processes. While biomedical engineering has more complex subdivisions, which focuses on particulate field of study.

Bioengineering is a new discipline that combines many aspects of traditional engineering fields such as chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering. Bioengineering graduates are employed by a variety of institutions, including medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies and medical research institutions. Graduates are prepared for continued study to pursue careers in medicine, law, business and other fields.

A biomedical engineering major uses science and engineering to find innovative solutions to issues in medicine and biology. Students learn about ethics and how to account for economic, social, global and environmental factors. Biomedical engineering majors can explore many career options, including working in medicine or with technology startups.

This seems like a questions i should have looked into prior to starting my undergrad. 😰 

Bioengineering seems like a relative new discipline that combines several aspects and applications of engineering principles  to living "components" i.e creating organs in vitro. Biomedical engineering tend to zero in on new solutions for how cells, organs and systems function in the human being. Many concepts of core engineering  such as design, calibration and validation. 

After looking at different programs online, the distinct difference between Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering seems to be that Bioengineering focuses more on in vivo applications where Biomedical Engineering focuses more on in vitro applications. Bioengineering programs advertise their work in developing devices for inside the body, such as for improving muscles and tissue. Biomedical engineering programs advertise their work in developing devices for outside of the body to improve the processes inside of the body such as Ultrasounds and exoskeletons. However, that is not to say that there is not any overlap. In fact, Biomaterials, a track in the Biomedical Engineering program at NJIT, focuses on more bioengineering curriculum such as tissue engineering. Also, Bioengineering seems to be its own program, whereas Biomedical Engineering takes concepts from other engineering disciplines such as Electrical, Chemical, and Mechanical Engineering and applies those to the body. Overall, there are similarities between the two subjects and both are important, but Biomedical Engineering seems to have more diverse applications than Bioengineering.

One question that can be raised by this is that if Biomedical Engineering continues to grow in popularity as a major, will it make the Bioengineering major obsolete?

After doing some research, I have found that Bioengineering is more of an umbrella term for interconnecting engineering with biology. It mainly focuses on the studies of life sciences and agriculture and how those can be manufactured to use in the real world. In the case of Biomedical Engineering, it takes both of these aspects and streamlines them to be applied for medical purposes. This can mean various things like manufacturing prosthetics to help those with limited mobility, growing marker cells to help find a way to cure cancer, or developing growth-triggering polymers that can help facilitate cell growth.