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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.