Critical assessment and outlook for the 50 biomedical engineering undergraduate programs in Mexico.

Biomedical Engineering (BME) has been taught in Mexico at the undergraduate level for over forty years. The rationale for the introduction of this profession was to help manage and maintain the growing technological infrastructure in the health care system during the seventies. Owing to this, it is not surprising that early versions of the BME curricula were oriented towards clinical engineering and medical instrumentation. In the last decade the number of programs has grown from three in the seventies and eighties to fifty at present. This work is the result of the analysis of the BME programs in all the institutions that offer this degree in Mexico. Three main issues were studied: the curricula, the sub-disciplines that were emphasized in the programs and the job market. Results have shown a striking resemblance in most of the programs, which are mostly dedicated to teaching aspects of medical instrumentation and clinical engineering. These results reflect an agreement with the requirements of the job market, but since most job offerings are for low-paying positions in sales, service and hospital maintenance, we question the wisdom of stressing these sub-specialties at research universities, where faculties and research labs offer a wide variety of options. An analysis of work at these centers shows that most of the results are publications, so the need to emphasize translational research and partnerships with industry are suggested.

Biomedical Engineering curriculum at UAM-I: a critical review.

The Biomedical Engineering (BME) curriculum at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) has undergone at least four major transformations since the founding of the BME undergraduate program in 1974. This work is a critical assessment of the curriculum from the point of view of its results as derived from an analysis of, among other resources, institutional databases on students, graduates and their academic performance. The results of the evaluation can help us define admission policies as well as reasonable limits on the maximum duration of undergraduate studies. Other results linked to the faculty composition and the social environment can be used to define a methodology for the evaluation of teaching and the implementation of mentoring and tutoring programs. Changes resulting from this evaluation may be the only way to assure and maintain leadership and recognition from the BME community.

Managing new directions for a 38 year old undergraduate BME program.

The Biomedical Engineering curricula in general must reflect the state of the art in the technology related to medicine and health care, as students who graduate from these programs are directly related to the well-being of the patients, either through new devices and technologies being invented or through the application of their technical knowledge in the service industry. At present, there are more than 25 BME undergraduate programs in Mexico. Most of them are oriented towards the instrumentation and clinical engineering branches of the field, while a few others have strong components in signal analysis. The program at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) is one of the oldest and has been used as a reference by most other programs. Since UAM is one of the top three research universities in the country, it is well poised to incorporate its research directions into a more modern curriculum. This paper deals with the efforts that have been carried out in order to minimize the excessive influence of the electrical engineering subjects in the BME undergraduate curriculum and the approaches to reach consensus-based decisions to explore new directions related to emerging disciplines in medical technology and health care. After analysis of the current state, a discussion on future directions is presented.

VO2 and VCO2 variabilities through indirect calorimetry instrumentation.

The aim of this paper is to understand how to measure the VO2 and VCO2 variabilities in indirect calorimetry (IC) since we believe they can explain the high variation in the resting energy expenditure (REE) estimation. We propose that variabilities should be separately measured from the VO2 and VCO2 averages to understand technological differences among metabolic monitors when they estimate the REE. To prove this hypothesis the mixing chamber (MC) and the breath-by-breath (BbB) techniques measured the VO2 and VCO2 averages and their variabilities. Variances and power spectrum energies in the 0-0.5 Hertz band were measured to establish technique differences in steady and non-steady state. A hybrid calorimeter with both IC techniques studied a population of 15 volunteers that underwent the clino-orthostatic maneuver in order to produce the two physiological stages. The results showed that inter-individual VO2 and VCO2 variabilities measured as variances were negligible using the MC while variabilities measured as spectral energies using the BbB underwent 71 and 56% (p < 0.05), increase respectively. Additionally, the energy analysis showed an unexpected cyclic rhythm at 0.025 Hertz only during the orthostatic stage, which is new physiological information, not reported previusly. The VO2 and VCO2 inter-individual averages increased to 63 and 39% by the MC (p < 0.05) and 32 and 40% using the BbB (p < 0.1), respectively, without noticeable statistical differences among techniques. The conclusions are: (a) metabolic monitors should simultaneously include the MC and the BbB techniques to correctly interpret the steady or non-steady state variabilities effect in the REE estimation, (b) the MC is the appropriate technique to compute averages since it behaves as a low-pass filter that minimizes variances, (c) the BbB is the ideal technique to measure the variabilities since it can work as a high-pass filter to generate discrete time series able to accomplish spectral analysis, and (d) the new physiological information in the VO2 and VCO2 variabilities can help to understand why metabolic monitors with dissimilar IC techniques give different results in the REE estimation.

New continuing education programs for hospital and clinical engineering.

This paper describes the new continuing education efforts that are being made to offer degrees more in tune with the career path for clinical engineering or for engineers working at different hospitals. Following an analysis of the issues regarding the field of hospital engineering in Mexico, and the type pf professionals that provide this service, we have implemented a series of programs in order to provide a full spectrum of educational opportunities in biomedical engineering. Since the conventional research-oriented graduate program is doing well, and the number of faculty that is interested in clinical engineering is growing, we now offer professional development track for engineers working inside the hospital environment.