As educational programs in Biomedical Engineering have grown rapidly over the past several years, faculty at over ninety universities have recently developed or are developing courses in biomedical technology innovation, design, prototyping, testing, evaluation, entrepreneurship and associated social/ethical issues. Approaches to teaching this material are diverse and there is little shared information between programs. With this seventh forum (sixth as BME-IDEA -BioMedical Engineering - Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship Alliance), we will continue to collect key figures in the area of education for biomedical engineering innovation and continue our development of shared resources begun at our past six conferences (Houston, 2002; San Francisco, January, 2003 and Nashville, October, 2003; Philadelphia, October, 2004; Baltimore, September 2005; Chicago, October 2006). In addition, the conference will include opinion leaders and visionaries from the biomedical technology industry, foundations and government. We believe the BME-IDEA alliance plays a key role in informing educators as they plan educational experiences to meet future needs. The theme of the 2007 conference is "Innovations in Teaching Design and Entrepreneurship."
Conference Goals
1) Continue collecting data re: the initial experience of different university programs involved in innovation, design, technology transfer and entrepreneurship in biomedical engineering. 2) Discuss objectives, challenges, and opportunities for further development of these programs including industry and academic perspectives. 3) Continue to explore the potential for sharing resources and creating community-wide assets and tools and recruit participants in the existing collaborative efforts (e.g. bmesource web portal, the design contest, IP survey)
Intellectual Merit
The past meetings have shown that much can be gained by bringing together faculty who have innovative practices as their common goal. There is much to share in terms of approaches to courses, curriculum, funding, facilities, teaching resources and team-based learning. In addition, by hearing from leaders in industry, foundations and others in academia, the faculty members develop a better perspective on where their students are headed, what needs to be done to prepare them for the future and how others are meeting those needs in their environments. Collaborative education conferences are not new, of course, but focusing on these topics, Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship, within the context of BME is.
Broader Impact
We believe that this conference, titled Innovations in Teaching Design and Entrepreneurship, will produce a long-lasting benefit by offering innovative teaching resources and materials to a larger audience through publication on the BME-IDEA.org website. In addition, attendees can take ideas back to their colleagues at the many universities that are represented at our conference. All past attendees of the meeting are notified when new resources are made available on the website, thus any one BME-IDEA meeting can provide additional resources to faculty at over ninety universities.
