Getting into engineering from medicine

[qmcat]

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Is there any way that you can get experience in engineering during or after medical training?

I recently interviewed with a doc who does research into inventing and testing new surgical tools and approaches, and it seems like really interesting stuff that I want to get into. But, he ended up referring me to a different research lab that he thought would be better for me because my previous experience in research has mostly been in molecular bio and chemistry, and I didn't have any background in engineering or physics. He did say that I was welcome to come by his lab anytime to watch. But, I'm just wondering if I wanted to go into academics later on and work on designing surgical tools and stuff, what would be the best way to get experience in that area? Would applying to do a masters in bioengineering or a research fellowship down the line be feasible?

Any thoughts?

 

[soccerboy2288]

Hi I actually did my undergrad in biomedical engineering. I am going to be attending med school in july, but I also wanted to utilize my engineering background in the future; work on inventions/devices and whatnot.

I talked to a M.D. professor at my school who already has several patents (he made ear and eye implants too, brilliant guy). After talking to him the gist was that it'll be really hard to practice medicine and to work on devices at the same time. He told me after getting his MD, he did not go into residency and has not practiced medicine since completing med school. Just worked on inventions.

Overall, I think it depends on how involved you want to be in practicing medicine and inventing devices (do you want to be making inventions left and right and get involved in the engineering aspects? or do you want to maybe be in charge of one aspect of the invention...say the clinical trial since you are an MD). Regardless, there are people who specialize only in engineering or only in medicine, so I would guess if you spread your resources and mental capacity, it'll be more difficult to compete with experts in each field. I know two programs where they have this combined m.d. and engineering program. I know harvard's med school has one with MIT, and USC has a HTE or HET (health, technology, and engineering) program where md students work with engineering phd students to work on a device during school. Physicians and engineers think differently; these programs are meant to teach how to work together i think.

all this is just my opinion though after talking to some people.

 

[soccerboy2288]

Hi I actually did my undergrad in biomedical engineering. I am going to be attending med school in july, but I also wanted to utilize my engineering background in the future; work on inventions/devices and whatnot.

I talked to a M.D. professor at my school who already has several patents (he made ear and eye implants too, brilliant guy). After talking to him the gist was that it'll be really hard to practice medicine and to work on devices at the same time. He told me after getting his MD, he did not go into residency and has not practiced medicine since completing med school. Just worked on inventions.

Overall, I think it depends on how involved you want to be in practicing medicine and inventing devices (do you want to be making inventions left and right and get involved in the engineering aspects? or do you want to maybe be in charge of one aspect of the invention...say the clinical trial since you are an MD). Regardless, there are people who specialize only in engineering or only in medicine, so I would guess if you spread your resources and mental capacity, it'll be more difficult to compete with experts in each field. I know two programs where they have this combined m.d. and engineering program. I know harvard's med school has one with MIT, and USC has a HTE or HET (health, technology, and engineering) program where md students work with engineering phd students to work on a device during school. Physicians and engineers think differently; these programs are meant to teach how to work together i think.

all this is just my opinion though after talking to some people.

 

[fizzgig]

for what it's worth, i'm a graduate BME student.

i would think to get a taste of it, working with a lab in med school would be useful. dunno how your school does it but i'd assume you could contact the lab directly. if your research experiences have to be super structured as to how much result data you get out in x amount of time, it could be hard (since you might have a learning curve going on).

soccerboy's right for future plans though. if you want to be the MD collaborating (giving ideas/advice to the engineers and letting them collect data from your clinical practice and using the prototypes as they come) then a graduate degree might not be needed - you'd be learning about the specific research area as you make lab connections as an MD. you'd need to go into a specialty that utilized whatever neato devices you like of course. depending on your specialty you may be able to do a fellowship with dedicated research time. the surgeons we work with who actually come to our lab and help us with experiments are surgical fellows. the attending has some dedicated research time too but i think a lot of it is used doing meetings etc, and he prob has some non-engineering related cakes baking over in the med center too.

if by 'get into academics' you mean actually work for an engineering department full time then of course you'd have to do the grad school thang.

 

[ucsfstudents]

One of our students went to graduate school for engineering after getting his MD. He did not do a residency. He had an undergraduate engineering degree.

 

[wholeheartedly]

maybe something like this?

http://biodesign.stanford.edu/bdn/index.jsp

under fellowships they have an inovation fellowship and a surgical biodesign fellowship

I don't know if that's the type of thing you're looking for but I stumbled across it awhile back.

 

[qmcat]

Thanks for the useful replies and links. It looks like as a MD, it'll be more realistic to focus on clinical trials to test out devices than to spend another handful of years getting an engineering degree or going into design. My major in undergrad was chemistry, so I doubt that I'll be able to get an engineering masters or something after residency. The fellowship option looks like something that would be worth doing though.

As for going into academics, I hope to do something like what the PI whom I met is doing now... where you work 2-3 days per week in the clinic and OR, and spend the other 2-3 days in the lab working on surgical simulations and devices. That PI is credited with designing some new minimally invasive surgical techniques and tools and he tests them out using simulations. I think his college major was in biomedical engineering though, so I was just wondering if it would be possible for me, as a previous chemistry major, to do something similar to what he's doing now.

 

[fizzgig]

fwiw you can (assuming things don't change) get into BME programs with variable undergrad majors. we've got bio, compsci, etc that i know of, prob chem somewhere too. since what you want to do isn't likely to be super chem based (unless you design implants and worry with how to make it/biocompatibility) you'd have a steep learning curve, but anyway. just more info 🙂

 

[surftheiop]

also BME is a really wide field , they don't care so much about your degrees, but more what your experience is research wise. For example, one of my BME professor had a PhD in physics, a ton of them are ChemE's, etc.

 

[ucbsmd]

also BME is a really wide field , they don't care so much about your degrees, but more what your experience is research wise. For example, one of my BME professor had a PhD in physics, a ton of them are ChemE's, etc.

I had profs in my undergrad's BME who were PhD's in Chemistry, EE and ME. The department was run by an MD and the device design and innovation track was run by an Master of Design, Industrial Design.

Sufttheiop is correct in saying that BME in academia is currently run by a group of people with a very broad background.

 

[tortuga87]

Yeah, because BME is so varied, you can just learn the specific niche you want to enter rather taking the broad coursework required in a degree. You can also skip all bio requirements and just learn quant courses. This basically amounts to about 2-3 math classes (e.g., multivariable calc, linear algebra, differential eq), maybe a cs class, a general BME methods course, and a couple specialty quant classes. Doable in 1.5-2 years