The sphere of biomedical engineering anticipates an incredible future for the sphere, its researchers, and students.
IEEE, the world’s largest technical skilled organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (IEEE EMBS), recently published an in depth position paper on the sphere of biomedical engineering titled, “Grand Challenges on the Interface of Engineering and Medicine.” The paper, published within the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology (IEEE OJEMB), was written by a consortium of fifty renowned researchers from 34 prestigious universities world wide, and lays the muse for a concerted worldwide effort to realize technological and medical breakthroughs.
Representing the University of Pittsburgh within the position paper is Sanjeev G. Shroff, Interim U.S. Steel Dean of the Swanson School of Engineering; Distinguished Professor of and Gerald E. McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering; and Professor of Medicine.
“What we have completed here will function a roadmap for groundbreaking research to remodel the landscape of drugs in the approaching decade,” said Dr. Michael Miller, senior writer of the paper and professor and director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “The outcomes of the duty force, featuring significant research and training opportunities, are poised to resonate in engineering and medicine for many years to come back.”
“Because the founding of our Department of Bioengineering 25 years ago, we have now witnessed transformative advances and recent technologies developed through partnerships between Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, School of Medicine, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Brain Institute, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC),” Dr. Shroff said. “The sphere of biomedical engineering is at a critical juncture in its evolution, with a have to reflect on the past and discover singular challenges that may proceed to enhance the human condition, These recent Grand Challenges, developed through a worldwide debate, will help guide our academic programs and research in addition to prepare the following generation of bioengineers.”
The position paper was the results of two years of dialogue culminating in a two-day workshop organized by IEEE EMBS and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and the Department of Bioengineering on the University of California San Diego. Through the course of the workshop, the researchers identified five primary medical challenges which have yet to be addressed, but by solving them with advanced biomedical engineering approaches, can greatly improve human health. By specializing in these five areas, the consortium has laid out a roadmap for future research and funding.
The Five Grand Challenges Facing Biomedical Engineering
- Bridging precision engineering and precision medicine for personalized physiology avatars
In an increasingly digital age, we have now technologies that gather immense amounts of knowledge on patients, which clinicians can add to or pull from. Making use of this data to develop accurate models of physiology, called “avatars” — which keep in mind multimodal measurements and comorbidities, concomitant medications, potential risks and costs — can bridge individual patient data to hyper-personalized care, diagnosis, risk prediction, and treatment. Advanced technologies, reminiscent of wearable sensors and digital twins, can provide the premise of an answer to this challenge.
- The pursuit of on-demand tissue and organ engineering for human health
Tissue engineering is entering a pivotal period wherein developing tissues and organs on demand, either as everlasting or temporary implants, is becoming a reality. To shepherd the expansion of this modality, key advancements in stem cell engineering and manufacturing — together with ancillary technologies reminiscent of gene editing — are required. Other types of stem cell tools, reminiscent of organ-on-a-chip technology, can soon be built using a patient’s own cells and may make personalized predictions and function “avatars.”
- Revolutionizing neuroscience using artificial intelligence (AI) to engineer advanced brain-interface systems
Using AI, we are able to analyze the assorted states of the brain through on a regular basis situations and real-world functioning to noninvasively pinpoint pathological brain function. Creating technology that does it is a monumental task, but one which is increasingly possible. Brain prosthetics, which complement, replace or augment functions, can relieve the disease burden caused neurological conditions. Moreover, AI modeling of brain anatomy, physiology, and behavior, together with the synthesis of neural organoids, can unravel the complexities of the brain and convey us closer to understanding and treating these diseases.
- Engineering the immune system for health and wellness
With a heightened understanding of the basic science governing the immune system, we are able to strategically make use of the immune system to revamp human cells as therapeutic and medically invaluable technologies. The applying of immunotherapy in cancer treatment provides evidence of the combination of engineering principles with innovations in vaccines, genome, epigenome and protein engineering, together with advancements in nanomedicine technology, functional genomics and artificial transcriptional control.
- Designing and engineering genomes for organism repurposing and genomic perturbations
Despite the rapid advances in genomics up to now few many years, there are obstacles remaining in our ability to engineer genomic DNA. Understanding the design principles of the human genome and its activity will help us create solutions to many alternative diseases that involve engineering recent functionality into human cells, effectively leveraging the epigenome and transcriptome, and constructing recent cell-based therapeutics. Beyond that, there are still major hurdles in gene delivery methods for in vivo gene engineering, wherein we see biomedical engineering being a component to the answer to this problem.
“This paper represents a serious milestone within the advancement of biomedical engineering, which could only have been achieved through close collaboration quite than the work of many siloed individuals,” said consortium member Dr. Metin Akay, founding chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department on the University of Houston and Ambassador of IEEE EMBS. “We’ve got a shared commitment to advancing patient-centric technologies, and healthcare efficacy and accessibility — which extends beyond academic institutions — and elevating healthcare quality, reducing costs and improving lives worldwide.”
“These grand challenges offer unique opportunities that may transform the practice of engineering and medicine,” remarked Dr. Shankar Subramaniam, lead writer of the taskforce, distinguished professor, Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering on the University of California San Diego and past President of IEEE EMBS. “Innovations in the shape of multi-scale sensors and devices, creation of humanoid avatars and the event of exceptionally realistic predictive models driven by AI can transform our lifestyles and response to pathologies. Institutions can revolutionize education in biomedical and engineering, training the best minds to have interaction in crucial problem of all times — human health.”
