Educational Opportunities in BME Specialization - Tradition, Culture and Perspectives

Abstract

Medical physics and engineering education in Poland started in the 1930s with the foundation of the Radium Institute in Warsaw by Maria Sklodowska-Curie. Prof. Cezary Pawlowski, one of the assistants and then collaborators of Mme Curie (fig. 1), organized the first courses in medical physics and biomedical engineering at the Physics Department of the Radium Institute. The first course in medical engineering started at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Warsaw University of Technology in the 1950s. Then, at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics of the AGH University of Science and Technology (former University of Mining and Metallurgy) in Krakow, Prof. Ryszard Tadeusiewicz organized the first courses in biomedical engineering in the 1970s. Fig. 2 shows the first Polish textbooks in Medical Electronics and in Biocybernetics. Note the year of the issue of both books, 1978. Until the academic year 2005/2006, education in biomedical engineering was offered only as a specialization in other fields of studies, e.g. mechanics, automatics & robotics and electronics. The development of new technologies in medical diagnosis and therapy required a new approach to biomedical engineering education. Therefore, a consortium was set up of six technical universities (in alphabetical order): The AGH University of Science and Technology (Krakow), The Gdansk University of Technology (Gdansk), The Silesian University of Technology (Gliwice), The Technical University of Lodz (Lodz), The Warsaw University of Technology (Warsaw) and The Wroclaw University of Technology (Wroclaw). The consortium developed a new programme of education and then applied to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for an official permit to create a new field of studies referred to as “Biomedical Engineering” (BME). In June 2006, the Ministry gave its consent to this proposal. The AGH University of Science and Technology was first in Poland to