In applying to this program I knew that I would learn more about healthcare systems, but I could never have predicted the visits we would take to gain that knowledge. While we went on intriguing tours like seeing the Theil Cadavers and had visits from clinicians like former ENT surgeon Rodney Mountain, I found the most impactful experience on my knowledge of healthcare to be visiting Jean Ngoie at the University of Dundee. Jean is the Head of Instrumentation & Clinical Engineering at NHS Tayside, which means that he is in charge of bringing new technologies into the healthcare system and that they are correctly implemented and are safe to use for patients. While also working directly with eth NHS, he also works with the University of Dundee biomedical engineers to give them real-life experience in the biomedical engineering field by implementing methods such as simulations and recreations of different medical wards to replicate real scenarios.
The usage of these real scenarios is what really changed what I thought BME and healthcare education could be. With these resources, he is taking these students and making them ideal for companies right out of university. One example of the technology that he is using to train his students was the usage of a DaVinci surgical machine. A biomedical engineer may not be working directly within the DaVinci machine performing the procedure, but rather working with the machine when it needs to be fixed, calibrated, and/or adjusted in any way. This changed my perspective on what a biomedical engineer does and one way they are implemented within the healthcare system.
On another note, in his free time, Jean Ngoie travels across the world and works with countries and areas that may not have as developed a healthcare system or infrastructure. One of his stories that really struck me was when he was in one of these areas and assisting in a surgery when the power to the ward cut out. For a minute, everyone was confused and did not know what to do, but then Ngoie took his phone flashlight and put it to the end of a fiber optic cable, therefore lighting up the surgical area. With this experience, he came back to Dundee and had one of his students work on a project creating a light source for areas that may not always have electricity or power at all times. This made me think of where innovation is founded, and the vast array of needs that form the basis of ideation. Seeing how the field of biomedical engineering is being used in real life from someone with firsthand experience changed my viewpoints on engineers within healthcare systems, and the basis of ideation and innovation for novel products and devices.