Paper ID #11506

The creation of a Biomedical Engineering

Prof. Gary J. Mullett, Springfield Technical Community College

Gary J. Mullett, a Professor of Electronics Technology and Co-Department Chair, presently teaches in theElectronics Group at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) located in Springfield, MA. Along time faculty member and consultant to local business and industry, Mullett has provided leadershipand initiated numerous curriculum reforms as either the Chair or Co-Department Chair of the four tech-nology degree programs that constitute the Electronics Group. Since the mid-1990s, he has been activein the NSF’s ATE and CCLI programs as a knowledge leader in the wireless telecommunications field.A co-founder of the long running National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (then the ICTCenter) located at STCC, Mullett also played a principle role in the development of the innovative andlong running Verizon NextStep employee training program. The author of two text books, Basic Telecom-munications – The Physical Layer and Wireless Telecommunications Systems and Networks, Mullett didboth his undergraduate and graduate work (in Remote Sensing) in the ECE Department at the Universityof Massachusetts at Amherst where he also taught the undergraduate sequence of courses in electromag-netics. He has presented at numerous local, regional, and national conferences and also internationallyon telecommunications and wireless topics and on the status of the education of electronics technicians atthe two-year college level. His current interests are: the adaptation of a systems-level approach to the ed-ucation of electronics technicians and virtual instrumentation, applications of the emerging field of wiredand wireless networked embedded controllers and sensor/actuator networks, and cyber-physical systemapplications.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2015

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The creation of a Biomedical Engineering

Technology program for the 2020s

Abstract

Many biomedical engineering technology or similarly named programs were spawned in the

early 1970s. These programs, at the two-year college level, were a response to the demand for

technicians to deal with the rapidly expanding base of medical equipment that was being

deployed primarily in hospitals. Although there were many electronics engineering technology

programs at the community college level, it was thought that the need for technicians skilled in

the medical equipment area would be more successfully satisfied through a specific program that

taught the fundamentals of electronics and then concentrated on medical equipment and

electrical safety. Programs were designed to produce graduates that could deal with the

biomedical equipment technology of the day and the needs of the clinical workplace.

During the time that these programs flourished, biomedical technicians would troubleshoot faults

to the part level and replace defective components to affect a repair. However, Moore’s law has

been hard at work for the last five decades and the technology utilized by the medical field has

morphed substantially over the last twenty years in particular. The adoption of digital electronics

technologies to replace analog electronics, the introduction of low cost microcontrollers into

electronic systems, the Internet, wireless networking technologies, medical laser systems, and

innovative medical sensors and imaging techniques has changed the way medical care is

delivered today and the way maintenance and repair of equipment is performed. Furthermore, it

is felt by many that the e-healthcare field is at the cusp of another change that will rapidly

transform the medical device industry and as a result modify noticeably how health care is

provided. The implementation of medical cyber-physical systems will allow for the development

of virtual medical devices that will be deployed in both a clinical setting and in the home.

Presently, engineering technology education at the two-year college level does not produce

technicians with the skill sets needed to install, evaluate, maintain, and up-grade these systems as

they are envisioned in either setting. This paper will discuss the design and impending

implementation of a two-year “biomedical engineering technology” program tailored to meet the

e-healthcare workforce needs of the end of this decade and those required as we move into the

2020s for both clinical sites and home environments.

Introduction

During the early 1970’s, Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), a commuter college

located in the center of Springfield, Massachusetts established a distinct two-year Biomedical

Instrumentation Technology (BMIT) associates in science (AS) degree program. The program

was typical of biomedical technology programs of the time and had the goal of graduating

technicians that could deal with biomedical equipment in a clinical environment. The first year

of the program was similar to the first year of already existing, pervasive, Electronics/Electrical

Engineering Technology (EET) degree programs. The curriculum consisted of the required

general education courses and additional technical courses in the fundamentals of DC and AC

circuits and active semiconductor devices (i.e. analog electronics). During their second year of

study, students took courses in biomedical systems and measuring principles, a “Codes-Laws-

Safety” course, and participated in hospital internships, thereby, differentiating the program from

the classic EET programs of that time period. As the field of electronics technology entered the

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microelectronics era, courses about integrated circuits, microprocessors, and digital logic were

added to the biomedical curriculum to keep up with the rapidly changing technology. As was

typical of that stage in the evolution of electronics, the curriculum was extremely “parts centric”

since biomedical (and electronics) technicians were expected to repair electronics based medical

equipment by troubleshooting faults/problems to the part/device level. This popular program ran

successfully for approximately three decades during which time most of the medical facilities in

western Massachusetts and regions in surrounding states (i.e. middle to north-central Connecticut

and southern Vermont) employed graduates of this department. The program’s reputation was

such that a good number of the students that graduated from the program came from outside of

the school’s service area and then returned home to work after graduation. However, the program

became a victim of its own success when it eventually saturated the local workplace with

graduates during the mid- to late-1990s and was subsequently suspended due to the lack of a

workforce demand for biomedical instrumentation technicians in the college’s immediate service

area.

There have been no active public college, standalone, associate degree, biomedical technology

programs in the service area of Springfield Technical Community College or the central and

western part of the state of Massachusetts, for that matter, for the last fifteen years. During that

period, this author can attest to the fact that to satisfy whatever local demand existed over that

time frame, only a handful of the graduates of the college’s Electronics Systems Engineering

Technology (ESET) program (successor program to college’s legacy EET program) were hired

by local hospitals and medical equipment suppliers and these graduates were subsequently

trained in house by the vendors to deal with the medical industry specific hardware used in

various clinical settings.

Starting in 2011, the college was approached by a biomedical industry group, the Biomedical

Engineering Alliance & Consortium or “Beacon Alliance” located in Hartford, Connecticut. This

group, as illustrated on their web site1, consists of a broad spectrum of members from both the

public and private sectors with an interest in the promotion of the biomedical industry. Their

explicit intentions for contacting STCC were an effort to attempt to convince the college

administration (or at least start a dialogue) of the need to re-institute a biomedical technology or

similar type of degree program and to also add a biomedical device manufacturing track to its

technical programs. Besides the large medical/health sector industry in the college’s service area,

there are presently a large number of medical device manufacturers2 in the so called “New

England’s Knowledge Corridor”3 that is also part of the college’s area of service. A group of

STCC administrators and faculty from the School of Engineering Technology (SET), with

varying amounts of expertise in these areas, was convened to meet with the Beacon Alliance

people. One of the key questions asked by the faculty on the college’s committee was, “what is

the need?” Many on this curriculum “feasibility” committee were not convinced that a definite

need existed for a classic biomedical technician and some even thought that the very name was

misrepresenting what present day technicians in a hospital or clinical environment actually did.

Furthermore, although there was an agreement for the need of a workforce for advanced

manufacturing, the question again comes back to the numbers. Over the course of time, research

by the committee into workforce needs and meaningful conversations with employers yielded

further insight into what might be appropriate in terms of the required skill sets for these areas.

Several more meetings with the Beacon Alliance people and some of their members were held,

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talks with the local Regional Employment Board of Hampden County were held, a visit by many

on the committee to the newly completed (2012) Baystate Medical Center’s $300 million

“Hospital of the Future”4 located in Springfield was conducted, and a great deal of brainstorming

about what might be useful in terms of workforce development took place. It should also be

noted that consideration of the potential “graying” of the incumbent biomedical workforce and

pending retirements was also considered. Some of the committee, including this author, felt that

this proposed initiative presented an opportunity for the faculty to develop a new technical

program that would provide new graduates with the needed skill sets for the biomedical/

healthcare industry that would be relevant well into the next decade. The unanswered questions

were, “who would take on this task” and “where would the necessary funding come from?”

Interestingly and also unexpectedly, during these prolonged deliberations about the pros and

cons of the Beacon Alliance requests, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC)5, a quasi-

public organization charged with administering the ten year $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative

enacted by the Massachusetts Legislature in June 2008, put out a request for proposals at

approximately the same time (2013) for initiatives to enhance the life science’s workforce for the

state of Massachusetts. The college’s Grants Office applied for and received a relatively modest

planning grant to develop curricula and plan out capital equipment and facility needs for three

identified tracks that were related to the biomedical/life sciences industry. The three tracks were

tentatively named: Biomedical Instrumentation Technology, Biomedical Manufacturing

Technology, and Biotechnology. The first two tracks would be for new programs that had been

topics of discussion with the Beacon Alliance for the last two years while the third track involved

a relatively new pre-existing AS degree program6 that would be updated.

Furthermore, one of the faculty members on the SET curriculum feasibility committee already

had a $.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technology Education (ATE)

grant titled, “Intelligent Infrastructure Systems Education Project”, with its foremost project

goals being curriculum development (including course material and labs) and two-year college

faculty development activities. Today, this technology is better known as the Internet of Things

(IoT) or cyber-physical systems (CPSs) technology. Cyber-physical systems technology refers to

embedded control systems that are “tightly coupled” to the real world and require timing to

perform their function.7 This multi-year ATE grant, awarded at the end of 2010, had allowed this

faculty member the time and resources to research the emerging e-healthcare industry and to

learn how the enabling technologies of cyber-physical systems might profoundly revolutionize

the biomedical instrumentation/device industry. This nascent technology will allow us to change

how we provide healthcare in a clinical setting and transform how we care for our aging

population in their own homes. This awareness of how the healthcare industry was morphing and

an understanding of the characteristics of cyber-physical systems technology would become

quite influential in the development of a curriculum that would prepare biomedical graduates for

the new era of e-healthcare. With the pieces of the biomedical instrumentation puzzle falling into

place and funding from the MLSC planning grant, it was now time to develop and fine-tune the

curricula. This group effort took place over a period of about a year with the most recent draft of

the final curricula solidified during the fall of 2014. The rest of this paper outlines the changes

that are occurring in the healthcare industry to illustrate and rationalize the changing skills

required by technicians for this field, addresses the various technologies used to implement the

changes, relates the effects of cyber-physical system technology on the needed skill sets, and

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then chronicles the development of the curricula for the tentatively named “Biomedical

Instrumentation Technology” program. Note that the Biomedical Manufacturing Technology

track will not be addressed in this paper. Lastly, this paper will present an overview of an

additional $1 million in funding recently received from the MLSC for capital costs, as well as,

the final steps needed to bring in the first class of students.

The Dilemma and the Opportunity If one goes to the United States Department of Labor website and does a search on biomedical

engineering technician, one is redirected to medical equipment repairs as the closest occupational

classification match. Under this category, one finds a ten year projection of a yearly 30% growth

in employment8 through the year 2022. This figure certainly seems to indicate that there is a need

for such skills but it really does not tell the entire story. As mentioned earlier in this paper, the

now defunct Biomedical Instrumentation Technology program at STCC as originally conceived

in the early 1970s was “parts centric”. During that era, the unambiguous, part/component centric

aspect of the technology dictated how the technicians in this field were educated. However, since

the early 1970s Moore’s Law has been hard at work and the ball game has changed (see Figure 1

below).

Figure 1 – A depiction of Moore’s Law from 1970 to 2020

Over time, as could be predicted from Moore’s Law, electronic systems have evolved from a

collection of boards, crammed full of components, to systems-on-a-board, to systems-on-a-chip

(SoC) technology9. Today, industry routinely produces integrated circuits (ICs) that contain over

a billion transistors – this coupled with micro- or nano-electromechanical systems (MEMs or

NEMS) technology allows us to design and build complex, highly functional SoCs with on-chip,

high-powered, processing cores. In the biomedical field, all these technologies combined with

microfluidics technology allows for the fabrication of “lab-on-a-chip” type bio-sensor systems.

These technology developments have changed the way that we deal with the vast majority of

electronics based systems. We seldom repair electronic systems (which includes biomedical

equipment) to a part or component level anymore. Hence, for the faculty tasked with program

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development - the dilemma and the opportunity. These realities then beg several questions; Do

we continue to teach topics like biomedical instrumentation the way we had been doing it,

which, to the thinking of some, imparts a good deal of irrelevant skills and information to the

students, or do we take a new approach? Furthermore, have the needed skill sets morphed so

radically over time that the curriculum needs a different emphasis other than purely medical

equipment? Is an interdisciplinary approach that conveys the skills needed to deal with emerging

interdisciplinary technologies the correct tactic? To the first point, this author and others have

been proponents of teaching electronics based technology by means of a more systems oriented

approach for the last decade.10-15

It appears that the debate on this topic (at least in the electronics

engineering technology faculty ranks) is far from over and will continue on for some time to

come. However, the group agreed that for our proposed new biomedical technology curriculum a

systems centric approach will be taken. The second and third points will be addressed shortly

following a quick look at several other drivers of technologic change.

During the last two decades, additional factors have also transformed the way in which most

industry designs/engineers and uses electronic systems. We are at the beginning of the next

evolution in the possible uses and applications of electronics based technology coupled with the

connectivity of the Internet and embedded intelligence. Designers are adding intelligence and

communications links to our electronic/electrical systems in an effort to enhance their efficiency,

functionality, and ability to be reconfigured as needed. As mentioned previously, there are

several industry and popular press names for this phenomena: intelligent infrastructure systems,

the Internet of Things, Cisco’s the Internet of Everything (IoE), IBM’s Smarter Planet, and most

recently, (in scientific circles) cyber-physical systems. If one considers these types of Internet

enabled applications, it is evident that they are becoming both technically and economically

feasible due to the continued convergence of several mature, enabling technologies. Essentially,

through the use of low-cost but powerful networked embedded controllers (also known as

ambient intelligence), complex networked sensors and actuators (i.e. sensor networks), a

ubiquitous high-speed Internet facilitated by wireless data transmission technologies, and

applications specific software we are able to create intelligent infrastructure systems that have

the potential to change almost every aspect of mankind’s interaction with its environment.

Moreover, we will have the ability to efficiently and safely control large scale systems such as:

vehicle (land, air, and sea) transportation systems, power generation, transmission, and

distribution, and many other heretofore intractable applications of control system technology.

Cyber-physical system technology, by necessity, brings together the two worlds of information

technology (IT) (software) and the Internet of Things (IoT) (hardware).16

The understanding of

the theory and operation of wired and wireless networks, embedded controllers and their

interaction with sensors and actuators, data acquisition, and control software will be the required

skills needed to deal with these emerging technology applications. As shown below in Figure 2,

the foundation of the Internet of Things consists of these enabling technologies. A technician that

has to deal with cyber-physical systems or less complex sensor systems for a particular

technology will need to be skilled in the topics indicated in the figure and additionally must

possess knowledge about the particular technology (e.g. biomedical technology, power

transmission technology, vehicular technology, etc.) that the cyber-physical or sensor system is

being deployed within. The model depicted by Figure 2 shows the inter-disciplinary foundational

skills needed by a technician that deals with an “electronics based” technology application.

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Figure 2 – The underlying technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT)

Examining the healthcare field reveals that there are a host of applications involving “small

scale” medical cyber-physical systems for humans. Most of the medical sector applications

involve various wearable or implantable physiological sensors and actuators to be deployed on a

human body and used to continuously monitor patient health, enable fast detection of medical

emergencies, and deliver suitable therapies (e.g. pacemakers, insulin pumps, neurostimulators,

etc.) A key technology enabler for this area is wireless body sensor networks (BSNs) a sub-set of

wireless networking. Looking at the overall field of e-healthcare, wireless sensor networks are

poised to revolutionize how we care for the elderly or people with health issues.17

Until now, the medical device industry has been in the business of designing and fabricating

standalone devices to treat patients – diabetes care (insulin pumps), drug delivery systems

(infusion pumps), cardiovascular devices (pacemakers), respiratory devices, etc. This industry is

on the cusp of a rapid transformation. The results of which will be the medical device industry’s

embracement of the potential benefits of embedded software and network connectivity. Instead

of standalone devices, distributed systems that simultaneously monitor and control multiple

aspects of a patient’s physiology are ready to come out of the lab and be deployed for use in the

medical field. This combination of embedded software controlling these devices, networking

connectivity, and the problematic physical dynamics exhibited by the human body makes

modern medical device systems a distinct class of cyber-physical systems – being referred to as

medical CPSs or MCPSs. Recent industry predictions are for rapid market growth (>10% per

year) over the next decade for this emerging technology.18

The traditional clinical scenario can be equated to a classic closed loop control system model.

Medical devices act as sensors and actuators, the patient is the object being controlled (i.e. the

process), and caregivers (medical personnel) are the controllers. MCPSs alter this view by

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introducing additional computational entities into the control system that aid the caregiver in

controlling the patient’s well-being. Figure 3 below shows a conceptual overview of MCPSs in

block diagram form.19

The medical devices used in MCPSs can be placed into two broad groups

based on their purpose in the system – monitoring devices or treatment delivery devices.

Monitoring devices include: oxygen-level (pulse oximeters) sensors, temperature sensors, and

heart-rate monitors that all provide information about a patient’s present physiologic state/status. Treatment delivery devices include: infusion pumps and ventilators which physically actuate

therapy capable of changing the patient’s physiologic state in a positive way. In MCPSs, the

monitoring devices can feed data collected to a decision support or administrative support entity,

each of which serves a distinct and yet complementary purpose in the delivery of the patient’s

healthcare – the data may be transmitted through a network (wirelessly or hard-wired) to these

two entities. Administrative entities such as those represented by the electronic health records

(EHRs) and pharmacy stores icons are used to manage: patient health and treatment information

collected over a period of time. Given the personalized information that they gather, they have

the real potential to provide targeted actuation of treatment based on a more holistic view of the

patient’s health (i.e. considering potential drug interactions or the historic evolution of a patient’s

specific physiologic parameter or medical condition).

Figure 3 – Medical cyber-physical systems: Conceptual overview (Source:

IEEE Proceedings, Volume 100, Number 1, January, 2012

These administrative entities can assist in fulfilling the need for the continuous care of the

medical patient. Continuous gathering of data and the management of it is essential for many of

today’s health issues such as dealing with an aging population (data indicates that this is a world-

wide trend) and the associated rapid rise in the number of individuals with chronic disabling

conditions such as asthma, arthritis, heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes – to name the most

common. Decision support entities can process the data collected and use this processed data to

generate alarms for many medical emergencies that might occur. These alarms are necessary to

allow clinicians to know when the patient’s state of health has deteriorated and what information

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is relevant to treat them. At the present time, most medical devices can only be configured with

alarms that are activated when a threshold is exceeded.20

Research has shown that threshold alarms are unscientific and actually can lead to a decrease in

the quality of care. These alarms only alert a clinician to the fact that a threshold has been

crossed; they fail to provide any physiologic or diagnostic information about the current state of

the patient that might help reveal the underlying cause of the patient’s distress. The offshoot of

this is that medical device alarms need to become “smart”. With smart, targeted alarms that

provide context information about what caused them; caregivers can analyze the information and

use it more appropriately. The caregivers can then use the medical delivery devices to initiate

treatment (see Figure 3). This brings the caregiver into the control loop around the patient as also

shown by the figure. Alternatively, the decision support entities can employ a smart controller

(again, see Figure 3) to analyze the data received from the medical monitoring devices, appraise

the state of the patient’s health, and under computer control automatically begin treatment (e.g.

drug infusion) by issuing commands to medical delivery devices, thereby closing the control

loop. This last scenario outlines the operation of what might be considered a virtual medical

device (VMD).21

In the near future, MCPSs that stream real-time medical information from

different devices and combine it with information from a patient’s health record would most

likely improve the accuracy and usefulness of alarms. These systems could be designed to

automatically suppress irrelevant alarms and provide summaries of the patient’s state, as well as,

predict future trends in the patient’s condition. These MCPSs would act as high accuracy smart

alarms. This is where the networked connectivity of medical devices comes in. MCPSs will

consist of networks of medical devices and computer systems cooperating to provide patient care

– again a “virtual medical device”. VMDs can be brought into the patient care loop by coupling

specific network-connected devices (both monitoring and delivery) with the appropriate clinical

algorithm executing on a computer – a VMD “app” if you will!

Figure 4 – Wireless body area network (WBAN) and gateway to the Internet

(Source: IEEE Lifesciences Newsletter, December, 2013)

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At this point, let’s turn our attention to e-healthcare applications in the home. As previously

noted, body sensor networks (BSNs) are a key enabler of this type of technology. BSNs promise

to improve the quality of life through improved health, augmented sensing and actuation for the

disabled, independent living for the elderly, and reduced healthcare costs. Body sensor networks

consist of sensors and actuators that are typically worn on the human body or possibly implanted

in the human body (see Figure 4 above). As previously discussed, body sensors are the essential

elements of what are widely known as wireless body area networks or WBANs. For home

healthcare applications another type of sensor – ambient sensors are also considered to be part of

the overall picture. Body sensors are placed on, in, or around a user’s body for continuous

monitoring of the user’s physiological conditions such as heart rate and temperature. Ambient

sensors are typically used to measure the local environmental conditions. The use of ambient

sensors can be expanded to provide measurements of a person’s vital signs, as well as, other

meaningful information about a person’s movements (the usefulness of this will be touched upon

later). The human body produces many electrical “signals” that can be used by the medical field

to diagnose various medical conditions. Beyond our “vital signs” are brain waves (EEG), heart

signals (EKG or ECG), muscle signals (EMG), and nervous system signals.

We have already touched earlier upon the idea of sensors that analyze a person’s blood chemistry

using MEMs or NEMs based (lab-on-a-chip technology) bio-sensors. In the home environment,

all the sensors are networked and transmit data (via (multihop) wireless networking technology)

to the home “gateway” device (again, see Figure 4). The home gateway device provides a

connection to the Internet which provides connectivity to the health monitoring system. Several

IEEE wireless technologies that can provide this type of in-home connection to a gateway are

IEEE 802.15.4x, IEEE 802.15.5, and IEEE811.15.6. The gateway is connected to the Internet

through the use of either a wireline connection (DSL or Cable) or fiber optic technology or

cellular technology (now, 3G or 4G or future 5G). Of course, the goal is to make the body

sensors and their radio technology as small and as unobtrusive as possible.

Low power Radar sensor technology can be used for monitoring breathing conditions and

identifying potential abnormalities of sleeping people22

. Noncontact vital sign detection has been

demonstrated by researchers all over the world using radar systems. Radar sensing can be

utilized for indoor detection of human falls which allows for timely and accurate reporting of fall

incidents which can become severe if not dealt with in a timely (immediate) manner. Accurate

respiration measurements and monitoring also lends itself to many other important applications

such as: lie detection, psychotherapy, assessment of human physical states, and speech

monitoring. Respiration is a natural human activity; however, it is not uniform but changes in

association with a human’s physical state. Conventional medical monitoring techniques are

mostly based on contact methods and therefore are not as reliable or accurate.

The use of radar technology has also been suggested for gait analysis (i.e. observing how a

person walks) – an evolving medical field with many potential applications. Radar is not blocked

by walls or clothing and therefore these applications are not restricted to a single room

environment. Furthermore, the tracking of a person’s daily movements using this type of

technology is thought to be useful for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease23

. More recently,

there have been many experiments performed using very high frequencies (i.e. 100s of GHz) to

implement “remote” (non-contact) physiological sensing. It has been reported that heart rate

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changes may be detected by focusing an extremely high frequency beam of submillimeter wave

energy on the palm of a human hand – most of these techniques look at the parameter known as

the “reflection coefficient” of human skin to detect subtle changes in the heart beat of a human

subject.

The health issues related to an aging population are very complex. For people over the age of 65,

one of the most serious health care risks is falling. This is the leading cause of death for this age

group! For those that survive a fall, many will suffer hip fractures. Even with successful surgery,

about 40% of those hospitalized for a hip fracture cannot return to independent living, and,

amazingly enough, about 20% will die within a year! Using sensors like radar and/or wearable

accelerometers to detect falls, this age group would have a better prognosis for survival. Care for

people with heart disease is one of the biggest contributors to healthcare spending – at a cost of

$40 billion a year. The use of BSNs and WBANs to monitor patients at a high risk of falls and

those with chronic conditions or diseases can provide improved and more efficient healthcare in

a home environment setting.

The curriculum

After numerous meetings discussing what the curriculum should be for the proposed biomedical

instrumentation technology program (including a DACUM ) and after taking into account the

changing landscape of the clinical and home healthcare environments. The final curriculum for

the proposed program consists of the following courses (by semester):

Table 1- Proposed Biomedical Instrumentation technology curriculum

1st Semester Credits

Tech Math 1 4

English Composition I 3

Microcomputer Applications 3

Intro to Biomedical Devices & Industry 3

Electronics for Technicians I 3

2nd

Semester Credits

Instrumentation and Measurement 4

Math - Statistics 3

Human Biology I 4

Electronics for Technicians II 3

Embedded Controllers & Lab 4

3rd

Semester Credits

English Comp II or Tech Report Writing 3

Human Biology II 4

Sensors & Data Acquisition 4

Cisco - Introduction to Networks 4

Social Science Elective 3

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4th

Semester Credits

Physics of Light & Lasers 4

Biomedical Wireless Data Networks 4

Sensors for Biomedical Systems 3

Biomedical Systems 3

Chemistry 4

Table 1 – Proposed Biomedical Instrumentation Technology curriculum

As can be seen from Table 1, there are traditional general education courses and electives and

technical courses appropriate to the discipline. In the 1st semester, the technical courses consist of

Electronics for Technicians 1 (basic theory of electrical circuits) and Introduction to Biomedical

Devices and Industry (new courses are bolded in the Table) and there is an additional course

dealing with computer applications. In the 2nd

semester, the technical courses are Instrumentation

and Measurement, Electronics for Technicians 2 (basic theory of electronics), and Embedded

Controllers & Lab (all existing courses) and Human Biology 1. In the 3rd

semester, students take

Human Biology 2, Sensors and Data Acquisition (existing course), and Cisco’s – Introduction to

Networking (from the Cisco Academy CCNA curriculum). Finally, in the 4th

semester, both a

physics and chemistry course, and three new course: Biomedical Wireless Data Networks,

Sensors for Biomedical Systems, and Biomedical Systems.

The curriculum gives the students skills in the particular technology (biomedical) through

courses in Human Biology, Biomedical Devices & Industry, Sensors for Biomedical Systems,

and Biomedical Systems. Two courses present the fundamentals of electric circuits and

electronics (in a systems oriented fashion), two courses present instrumentation, measurement,

sensor, and data acquisition theory, one course presents information about computer use and

applications, one course introduces the concepts of computer networking, and one course builds

on several others by presenting material on Biomedical Wireless Data Networks. If one looks

back at Figure 2, it should be evident that the curriculum has captured most of the underlying

technologies of cyber-physical systems. The Biomedical Wireless Data Networks course in the

fourth semester introduces new technology that was not previously considered to be associated

with this technology area. For this reason some additional detail about this course’s content will

be offered here. The course objectives are given below in Table 2.

Biomedical Wireless Data Networks Course Objectives

1. To become familiar with the concept of a wireless electronic communications

system/network

2. To become familiar with the limitations of wireless networks due to various system

impairments

3. To become familiar with basic sub-systems of wireless networks and communications

systems

4. To become familiar with the concept of RF signals, communications frequency bands, and

digital modulation

5. To become familiar with the functions of electronic communications hardware

6. To become familiar with the properties of electromagnetic propagation

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7. To become familiar with today’s wireless networking systems

8. To become familiar with typical wireless test and measurement equipment

9. To become familiar with the techniques used to diagnose and evaluate the correct operation

of wireless networks

Table 2 – Course objectives for Biomedical Wireless Data networks

To achieve these course objectives students will be exposed to the fundamental concepts of

wireless communications, present day wireless data networks, wireless technology specific to

biomedical applications, wireless test and measurement equipment, and wireless system

operation evaluation techniques.

Conclusion

It was the feeling of the SET committee that the time was ripe to put together a forward looking

technology program that filled a workforce need. Many of the electronics technology faculty in

New England that were involved in the long running Verizon NextStep Program24,

(of which this

author was one) have felt that “derivative” technologies that are based in electronics systems

technology do not need technicians that are experts in electrical circuits theory or the mundane

knowledge of how to bias the many configurations of a transistor to make an amplifier circuit.

Experts in circuit theory and electronics tend to gravitate towards the fewer and fewer jobs that

require those skills. That lore and detailed knowledge of the field was appropriate when we fixed

systems to the part level. Those days are pretty much over now. Instead, the technician’s task has

morphed to include: new system installation, verification of correct operation, confirmation of

system electrical connections, total replacement of defective systems, and reprogramming and

updating system software. Electronics technology is a tool to be used to create physically

implemented applications that do useful things or tasks for us. If these applications happen to be

in the healthcare arena, we welcome those that keep us healthy and well as we live our lives. The

use of electronic systems, sensors and actuators, embedded controllers, and the connectivity of

the Internet open up a whole new field of possibilities for cyber-physical systems in the e-

healthcare field. Society will embrace these new types of applications that can improve our lives

and keep us in our homes longer. It’s time we started educating technicians to deal with this

technology!

Much like an epilog to a story, it should be revealed that as this paper was being prepared for

submission, the college was notified that its second grant application to the MLSC had been

favorably approved for $1 million to support the capital expenditures needed to proceed with the

implementation of the new programs (i.e. Biomedical Instrumentation & Biomedical

Manufacturing Technology). These capital expenditures include new equipment and renovation

of the space needed to house the new biomedical instrumentation program’s labs. This grant

money is for a two year time period - Fiscal 2015 through Fiscal 2017, so it is planned that we

take in our first classes of students in the Fall of 2016 and have the first graduating class in 2018.

The college’s admissions department will advertise the new programs through the traditional

media sources, we will hold open houses for local high schools, and we will do outreach by

going out to local schools to publicize these new programs. One of the interesting things about

these programs is the fact that young women are typically drawn to the healthcare industry. We

are hopeful that these programs can increase the number of female students in the STEM

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disciplines at STCC. There is still, sure to be, some fine tuning to the curriculum to be

accomplished but the committee that put this program together has a great deal of confidence

that its graduates will possess skills that will make them extremely employable in the e-

healthcare industry well into the 2020s.

Bibliography

1. http://www.beaconalliance.org/

2. The Medical Device Industry in Southern New England’s I-91 Corridor, Report by the Beacon Alliance,

June, 2004, http://www.beaconalliance.org/pdfs/Beacon_Report_FINAL.pdf

3. http://www.hartfordspringfield.com

4. http://www.healthcarenews.com/baystates-hospital-of-the-future

5. http://masslifesciences.com

6. http://catalog.Stcc.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=5&poid=1168&returnto=608

7. http://cyberphysicalsystems.org/

8. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Installation-Maintenance-and-Repair/Medical-equipment-repairers.htm

9. The 2010 Gigascale Imperative: Why the instruction of electronics technology must change!, by Gary J.

Mullett, Proceedings of the 2005 American Society of Engineering Educators Annual Conference and

Exposition, Portland, OR

10. Same as 9

11. Are the Electronics Technology Departments of Today, Destined to Become Academic Service Departments

of Tomorrow?, by Gary J. Mullett, 2006 SAME-TEC Conference, Santa Fe, NM, available on the SAME-

TEC web site, Conference Proceedings 2006: www.same-tec.org

12. Are Today’s Electronics Technology Programs Doomed to Extinction or is their Mission Changing?, by

Gary J. Mullett, Proceedings of the 2007 American Society of Engineering Educators Annual Conference

and Exposition, Honolulu, HI

13. The New Electronics Technology – Circa 2015, by Gary J. Mullett, Proceedings of the 2009 American

Society of Engineering Educators Annual Conference and Exposition, Austin, TX

14. The Disappearing Associates Degree Program in Electronics Technology, by Louis E. Frenzal Jr. ,

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society of Engineering Educators Annual Conference and Exposition,

Nashville, TN

15. Its 2010 and the new Electronics Technology Paradigm is Emerging, by Gary J. Mullett, Proceedings of

the 2010 American Society of Engineering Educators Annual Conference and Exposition, Louisville, KY

16. The Internet of Things (IoT) will create the need for the Cyber-Physical Systems Technician, by Gary J.

Mullett, Proceedings of the 2014 American Society of Engineering Educators Annual Conference and

Exposition, Indianapolis, IN

17. Special Issue on Cyber-Physical Systems, by Radha Poovendran, Krishna Sampigethaya, Sandeep Kumar

S. Gupta, Insup Lee, K.Venkatesh Prasad, David Corman, and Jamers L. Paunicka, Proceedings of the

IEEE, January 2012 , Vol. 100, No. 1, pp 7-14

18. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/disposable-medical-devices-sensors-market-worth-62127-

million-by-2018-227365151.html

19. Challenges and Research Directions in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems, by Insup Lee, et al, Proceedings

of the IEEE, January 2012 , Vol. 100, No. 1, pp 75-90

20. Same as 19

21. Same as 19

22. From Tumor Targeting to Speech Monitoring, Changzhan Gu and Changzhi Li, IEEE Microwave

Magazine, Volume 15, Number 4, June, 2014

23. Wireless Technologies for e-Healthcare, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, Vol.17 No. 1,

February, 2010

24. The Verizon NextStep Program – A Fifteen Year Partnership, by Gary J. Mullett, 2009 Conference for

Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC), Palm Springs, CA

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