Engineers are constantly helping to expand the scope of the world's medical knowledge and abilities, developing innovative new ways to make medical machinery, instrumentation, devices and implants inexpensive and beneficial to those in need.

According to the European Patent Office (via BVMed Annual Report 2007/2008), medical technology tops the list of registered inventions, with 15,700 patents. That means 11.4 percent of patent applications originate from the medical technology field. Since 1986, according to European medical technology association Eucomed, continuous investment in medical technology has led to a 50 percent decrease in mortality rates from heart attack, a 44 percent decrease in mortality rates from stroke and a 25 percent decrease in the overall death rate.

Engineering solutions will continue to play a key part in the complex tasks that must be mastered to ensure the health of the world's citizens. In fact, it is likely that some of the most important health-related breakthroughs over the next century will be advances in biomedical engineering, or the application of engineering principles and techniques to the medical field.

A committee selected by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) last year announced a list of the 14 most important engineering projects for the future, dubbed the Grand Challenges for Engineering. According to the panel, composed of some of the most accomplished engineers and scientists of their generation, the fields of health care and medicine pose some of the most formidable challenges for the 21st century.

Among the primary concerns for a population whose number of people aged 65+ is rising at a faster pace than at any point in the past: health and medicine.

The following are some ways that engineering solutions can continue to help reduce individual and societal vulnerabilities inherent to living in the modern world, according to the NAE, a not-for-profit part of the U.S. National Academies.

Advance Health Informatics
"Health and biomedical informatics encompass issues from the personal to global, ranging from thorough medical records for individual patients to sharing data about disease outbreaks among governments and international health organizations," according to the NAE. "Maintaining a healthy population in the 21st century will require systems-engineering approaches to redesign care practices and integrate local, regional, national and global health informatics networks."

Engineer Better Medicines
Although aspects of the personalized-medicine approach are in place for some diseases, multiple challenges still remain in the quest for an effective widespread system of personalized medicine. "They will be addressed by the collaborative efforts of researchers from many disciplines, from geneticists to clinical specialists to engineers, who are developing new systems to use genetic information, sense small changes in the body, assess new drugs and deliver vaccines," according to the NAE.

Reverse-Engineer the Brain
The intersection of engineering and neuroscience promises great advances in health care, manufacturing and communication. Figuring out how the brain works and improving sophisticated computer simulations will offer rewards beyond building smarter computers. Such advances pay dividends for medical devices and for the brain itself.

Finally, every 21st-century challenge in the realm of health and medicine will require engineering the tools of scientific discovery. Major experiments and exploration missions always need engineering expertise to design the tools, instruments and systems that make it possible to acquire new knowledge about the physical and biological worlds. New mathematical and computing methods, incorporated into the emerging discipline of "systems biology," could lead to better treatments of disease and a better understanding of healthy life. In addition, biologists will depend on engineers' help to develop new kinds of microscopes and new biochemical methods of probing the body.

"Innovative medical devices, and more efficient and effective drugs and drug-delivery systems translate directly into faster recoveries, less pain and greater freedom for patients," according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Professional Practice Curriculum (PPC). "Additionally, innovations in medical equipment and drug development technologies provide physicians and other health care providers with the tools and treatment options that allow them to better care for their patients.

"The importance of engineering and the key role of engineers in bringing those improvements and innovations to the people who need them can hardly be overstated," the PPC says.

Resources

Grand Challenges for Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering, Feb. 15, 2008

BVMed Annual Report 2008/2009
BVMed, April 2, 2009

Medical Technology in Europe: Key Facts and Figures
Eucomed, 2009

Professional Practice Curriculum: Healthcare
American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Pulse of the Industry: Medical Technology Report 2009
Ernst & Young, Oct. 23, 2009