ENGS 16 Biomedical Engineering for Global Health
The past 20 years have seen an incredible amount of high-tech medical advances, but to what degree have these impacted the health of those living in the developing world? The potential for years of life gained through biomedical technology is tremendous in some of the world’s poorest regions, but appropriate design requires an understanding of the clinical, political, and cultural landscape, and a clean-slate approach to developing low-cost, effective tech. This course offers an exciting opportunity to understand how to design solutions for the most important health challenges of the developing world. Learning goals will be achieved through hands-on experience, including: a laboratory component where we deconstruct, design and build a low-cost medical device, case study discussions on successful global health innovations, and several “teardowns” of common medical devices. Lecturers from Thayer, Tuck, TDC and Geisel will cover complimentary topics in clinical medicine, healthcare delivery, innovation and medical imaging. A final project will bring everything together by addressing a real health problem with a prototype of a low-cost tech solution. Enrollment is limited to 40 students.