Biomedical engineering education

Abstract

Modern medical and research laboratories are equipped with broad spectrum of equipment which need proper maintenance and instrumentation. Therefore, for proper maintenance and servicing of these equipment adequate education in biomedical engineering is an imperative. While joining the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), Dhaka, as a biomedical engineer, the author found that a lot of equipment had been discarded for minor problems. Most of the manuals were missing and there was no planning for the inventory of spare parts. There were no records for either calibration or repair schedule. The personnel were developed mostly by on-the-job training and they had only a rudimentary technical knowledge. The operators of the different equipment were not aware of proper handling. The problems discussed above were gradually taken care of by step-by-step development of manpower, collection of manuals, spare parts and modern test and measuring equipment. Refresher courses were introduced to make the staff get acquainted with the state-of-the art equipment. Above all technical discipline and motivation were created. The operators were trained for proper and safe handling of the equipment. As biomedical engineering education is a vast discipline comprising clear knowledge of biochemistry, mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering, training of biomedical engineers with a variety of skills is required. The author's experience in upgrading the maintenance of biomedical equipment and imparting training to technical staff on proper maintenance of these equipment with a minimum of resources in a developing country situation is discussed.