Toward a More Ethical and Sustainable Biomedical Engineering Education

Abstract

Important Lessons Can be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, which after more than two years of worldwide suffering is still among us. First, we now better understand that global health concerns cannot be tackled and solved individually and verify that the dream for universal health care is far from being fulfilled. Besides, biomedical technologies and medical devices, despite their transformative potential, cannot always reach those urgently needing them, due to centralized production, supply chain issues, intellectual property restrictions, and lack of raw materials and resources close to the point of care, which calls for a renovation of the biomedical industry aimed at sustainability and equity. To make matters worse, unethical behaviors of governments, companies, and citizens, from which the ongoing pandemic has provided plenty of examples, also endanger the already challenging progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including "Goal 3" on "Good Health and Well Being."