Biomedical Engineering after medicine

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Adnan123456789

New Member
5+ Year Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2017
Messages
7
Reaction score
1
Hello.

After finish medschool, i am thinking about doing postgraduate studies in Biomedical engineering or application of robotics in medicine.

Does anyone know of any post graduate degress that is about the application of robotics in medical field ?

thanks
 
Hello.

After finish medschool, i am thinking about doing postgraduate studies in Biomedical engineering or application of robotics in medicine.

Does anyone know of any post graduate degress that is about the application of robotics in medical field ?

thanks

Ya, a 4 year degree in biomedical engineering is what you’re referring to. And to focus in detail on robotics in medicine, you’re probably looking at grad school afterwards as most basic BME degrees only have a few courses dedicated to robotics. So bank on 4-8 years of school. If you want to work more on the policy/implementation side rather than the engineering side, there are probably short post-grad programs related to technology in medicine somewhere.

Like medicine, engineering is highly regulated. You can’t be an engineer unless you have an engineering degree, or at least meet criteria for professional registration in your state.

If you just want to work in the area, pick an area of medicine you like then collaborate with engineers down the road and just serve as the medical consultant. That’s the shortest route. Working in Pittsburgh or Boston would be great for this.
 
Ya, a 4 year degree in biomedical engineering is what you’re referring to. And to focus in detail on robotics in medicine, you’re probably looking at grad school afterwards as most basic BME degrees only have a few courses dedicated to robotics. So bank on 4-8 years of school. If you want to work more on the policy/implementation side rather than the engineering side, there are probably short post-grad programs related to technology in medicine somewhere.

Like medicine, engineering is highly regulated. You can’t be an engineer unless you have an engineering degree, or at least meet criteria for professional registration in your state.

I wonder where you studied Engineering, because this information is inaccurate in the United States. (Although it is true that BME Bachelor's degrees don't generally have much robotics)

You seem to be implying that OP would have to go back and get a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering - is that what you are saying? I don't really understand why he would go back and get a BME bachelor's degree if he already has an MD. Presumably he has earned a Bachelor's already, why get another one? You can't do much with a Bachelor's in BME anyway.

If you want to do real engineering work in biomedical engineering, you'll need to get a PhD. Don't go back and get your Bachelor's degree.

You do *not* need a bachelor's degree in BME to do biomedical engineering work. I have heard that certain fields of engineering are highly regulated, but for BME, you don't need a particular degree to work as an engineer. You need to get someone to hire you, or you could start a startup company.
 
Also, I know that there are some post residency fellowships out there that allow people to do medical device research. You might look into that given it would only be a year or two and you’d get paid to do it. Granted it wouldn’t give you the intense physics and engineering background a PhD would but would allow you to use robotics in the clinical setting...
 
I did undergrad and graduate work in Bioengineering, but not anywhere near robotics. That said, I agree with trapperjohn and save a life. Personally, I think you’d have to stretch pretty far, or find a very particular niche, for training in medical school or residency to provide much direct application in the early development side of things.

There are post-doc fellowships at a variety of industrial companies (in other tangentially medical fields), so I’d expect that would be the most you could expect to find. But it will take effort to find those companies that are doing work you’re interested in, and then seeing which of those companies is interested in a medically trained individual. Alternatively, there may be a select few medical institutions that would have work in that area.

In school/residency, developing a programming skill set would likely serve you better than any typical engineering coursework after residency. Your skills would be better applied near the clinical application (ergonomics/user design, medical regulations, etc), and not in basic development (circuit design, material strength, drafting). That said, because robotics is so heavily dependent on programming, having awareness/understanding of how programmers approach problems and how languages work would help you bridge that communication gap (and not dismiss the challenges).

All that said, completing a residency would still be wise, and I personally wouldn’t forgo training/board certification... I didn’t see you mention residency...
 
I wonder where you studied Engineering, because this information is inaccurate in the United States. (Although it is true that BME Bachelor's degrees don't generally have much robotics)

You seem to be implying that OP would have to go back and get a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering - is that what you are saying? I don't really understand why he would go back and get a BME bachelor's degree if he already has an MD. Presumably he has earned a Bachelor's already, why get another one? You can't do much with a Bachelor's in BME anyway.

If you want to do real engineering work in biomedical engineering, you'll need to get a PhD. Don't go back and get your Bachelor's degree.

You do *not* need a bachelor's degree in BME to do biomedical engineering work. I have heard that certain fields of engineering are highly regulated, but for BME, you don't need a particular degree to work as an engineer. You need to get someone to hire you, or you could start a startup company.

I have a PhD in engineering and what I am saying is that to truly do pure engineering, you need an engineering degree and an MD is not a substitute. And yes, I was saying to do robotics innovation you need to plan on grad school, ie. a PhD. That’s about 8 years total if your PhD is fast. Do you need a degree in BME to do BME work? No. But you need to learn it somewhere (it being dynamics, materials, electrical, programming etc) and it’s not going to be in med school or residency.

Why go back and do a bachelors if you have an MD? You wouldn’t, unless you hate money or you hate the prime years of your life, and that’s my point. Presuming OP does not have an engineering degree already, they would be better off doing residency and collaborating on robotics in some way from a medical perspective rather than taking the technical lead. They would still be doing BME-related work in this case. Maybe some grad schools would let them in without a BME or other engineering degree first and this would give them more technical training, but getting into this would probably depend on a lot of factors. As someone else said, learning programming would be helpful either way.
 
Top