Customer Reviews

Medicine by Design: The Practice and Promise of Biomedical Engineering

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This is a great non-technical introduction to those who are curious about the industry or who want to know more about Biomedical Engineering in general. The book is well-rounded, up-to-date as of 2006, and one of the only narrative books out there concerning BME. Its non-technical nature means it's accessible to everyone, engineering savvy or not.

The author writes about BME as a series of vignettes, each revolving around a researcher in a particular field, a patient with a condition that was alleviated by biomedical engineering, a major player in the industry, or a developing technology. For those unware, the unique characteristic of Biomedical Engineering is that it spans all engineering and science disciplines. You can have an electrical engineer working on an MRI machine, a materials engineer working on artifical joints, a programmer creating bioinformatics algorithms to decipher genetic code, a biologist trying to grow tissues to remedy organ donor shortages, etc. And you can't forget the doctors out there who straddle the line between patient care and engineering new technologies to supplement patient care.

Each chapter focuses on one of the BME sub-disciplines, such as tissue engineering, medical imaging, bioinformatics, implants, etc. Players in industry and academia are highlighted in narrative form as the author details the work of everyone from undergraduate students at Boston University using photonics to find tumors, to graduate students at UC San Diego using nanotechnology to research synthetic livers, to industry legends such as Earl Bakken, the founder of Medtronic. A few products are specifically highlighted such as Medtronic pacemakers, cardiac defibrillators, Minimed insulin pumps, Neurotech's encapsulated cell technology, and Intuitive's Da Vinci machine. Patients who have reaped the benefits of Biomedical Engineering advances are also interviewed and have their stories told.

I recommend this book highly to engineering students who are unsure what industry they want to enter, high school seniors who are searching for a college major (if I knew about BME in college, I would have definately pursued it, too bad for me), future doctors who have an affinity for engineering and problem solving, and those who are curious about the field in general. It's an enjoyable read and afterwards those who are engineering savvy but seek the altruism typically associated with medicine might feel a spark to become involved in this field.

I was looking to learn more about Biomedical Engineering and the Medical Device industry. I picked up this book based on the recommendation of a friend, and found it to be a great introduction to the field. Although it's a bit older of a book, the examples are still relevant. One particular example is about the creation of the Left Ventricle Assist Device (LVAD). The knowledge and vocabulary about the LVAD that I picked up from this book allowed me to speak with some confidence to colleagues with a biomed engineering background. The book isn't going to teach you everything under the sun, but I found it to be a good start.

It is an excellent book: engaging, informative, and it covers quite a bit of material.

However, the second paragraph on page 7 starts:
"The seniors were a diverse group---including students from China, India, Palestine, and Russia..."
I got stumbled on the word Palestine. I can understand that Fen Montaigne, the award-winning writer, may be unaware of the fact that there is no country with such name, but wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the editors at the Johns Hopkins University Press are less ignorant?
Of course, the young student at Boston U. Inas Khayal couldn't have been born in Palestine (page 21) unless she is at least fifty-nine years old...And so the "young student at Boston U. Inas Khayal" has turned the award-winning writer Fen Montaigne into a useful idiot... (I am referring to the utterly descriptive term "useful idiot" which was coined by Vladimir Lenin some 85 years ago)

Allowing to push political agendas onto pages of books designed to popularize science and technology is disheartening, to say the least.