Fifty Years of Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Education in Mexico and Latin America: Results, Reflections and Perspectives.

This manuscript provides reflections and perspectives on BME education in IEEE Region 9 (Mexico and Latin America) on the 50 anniversary of the founding of these undergraduate programs. It includes a bit of history, as well as analysis of around 150 existing programs in the region. Results of the different approaches are also included.

Thermal Evaluation of Multi-Antenna Systems Proposed to Treat Bone Tumors: Finite Element Analysis.

Microwave ablation is commonly used in soft tissue tumors, but its application in bone tumors has been barely analyzed. Antennas to treat bone tissue (~3 cm2), has been lately designed. Bone tumors at pathological stage T1 can reach 8 cm wide.

Analysis of the Unsuccessful Efforts to Design & Construct Invasive Mechanical COVID-19 Ventilators in Mexico: Did the Current BME Curricula at Mexican Universities Contribute to the Failure?

Mexico was caught unprepared to deal with the current COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most egregious failures was the incapability to provide an additional 10,000 ventilators in order to cope with the excess demand. The Mexican government proposed a program for funding the development of these devices and over 100 designs were submitted but were of below standard quality and performance.

Updating the Biomedical Engineering Curriculum in Latin America: Moving from management and maintenance to Design and Development of Medical Devices.

Biomedical Engineering as an undergraduate degree in Latin America is not new. However, most programs have the objective to produce professionals dedicated to the management and maintenance of health care technology. We believe that there is an important area of opportunity in the education of engineers who are competent in the design and development of medical devices.

Improved Outcomes in Hemodialysis/Hemodiafiltration Treatments Applying Exercise and Physiological Monitoring Techniques: Preliminary Results.

End-stage renal disease affects millions of people worldwide, and the only definitive solutions are renal transplants that are not widely available. Temporary solutions are renal replacement therapies such as peritoneal dialysis, hemodialysis and hemodiafiltration. These therapies as they are applied today are just partial measures and have many drawbacks and complications such as high mortality rates and high costs due to the use of supplemental drugs and emergency room visits.

Computed tomography is a feasible method for quantifying bone density in Macaca mulatta.

Osteopathologies are a result of advanced age and decreased bone density and represent a global health problem. It is therefore important to generate models for longitudinal studies of the pathophysiology in order to improve early diagnosis and develop preventive therapies. For this kind of research, the use of computed tomography (CT) to evaluate bone health offers advantages over other techniques since it provides more complete information.

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.

Analysis of the impact of medical technology assessment subjects on BME curricula.

This paper presents and analyzes the factors that have arisen on the implementation of the medical technology assessment and management courses, and the academic methodologies used to deal with them. Five courses that cover topics as Technology Management, Health Economics, Quality Assessment, Innovation and Entrepreneurship were designed as electives for BME curriculum and have been taught for the last two years. The activities carried out within the courses are described and their impact on the comprehension of the course contents are presented.

Automatic error detection in the clinical measurement of gastric impedance spectra.

Gastric impedance spectroscopy has been proposed as a method of monitoring mucosal injury due to hypoperfusion and ischemia in the critically ill. During validation tests for this procedure, it was found that 60% of the measurements had errors by factors inherent to the clinical setting, indicating that some kind of automatic error detection should be incorporated to potentially avoid the loss of measurements. This paper presents an algorithm developed to detect errors due to bad connection, bad location or bad contact of the electrode probe.