4 Points about Biomedical Engineering for Teens to Make Better Career Decisions
Biomedical engineering as a career has been around for quite a while now. Being said that, in India, the awareness is still relatively low. All our information mainly comes from all these foreign blogs and hence, enter Samriddhi.
Where have you heard about this field of engineering before? Are you confused if it is really engineering, or is it more on the medical side?
I’m sure that these might be some of the questions in your head right now. They probably have increased as you’ve continued to explore the internet for more and more information. It could be a possible future career option for any one of you reading this; that fact adds to my excitement to talk about this wonderful field with you guys!
I always get a myriad of questions when I mention I’ve completed my undergraduate in this field. What do Biomedical Engineers do? Is a Biomedical engineer a doctor? Is Biomedical engineering hard? These are just three out of many. Let me just straight away delve into these common misconceptions/questions, and there we’ll try and find our answers.
- Is it similar to studying medicine?
Guys, that’s not true.
If at all I got a penny every time someone asked me if I was pursuing medicine.
This field, like its name, entails a good amount of the study of physics and some of its areas. Now, before that makes you feel anything, let’s also talk about the curriculum’s role here. The one I’m sharing here is from the second semester at Mumbai University. So go on, look at the curriculum of your dream University. Even then, you might not have a clear understanding of the subjects, and that’s okay.
I feel the above read is necessary before you move on to any of these other points; let me tell you why. Many students in my batch had this misconception that if they can’t get into a medical college, the biomedical engineering degree would help them achieve that goal. And like I said, that’s not true. Reading that curriculum will give you a clearer picture of what you’re going to get once you enroll there.
You would get a job in a hospital but, as an engineer and not a doctor.
2. Is there a need for intense knowledge of biology?
I know most people do not go for this degree due to this confusion.
Talking about what I had learned while at Mumbai University, there’s no need for more than basic knowledge of the human body. We had everything as part of the course material when and where we needed to have SOME knowledge. It also makes more sense when you look at what all a Biomedical Engineer does.
Let’s consider an MRI machine for instance. In simple terms, the machine takes pictures of the insides of a brain. Now to create a machine like that one has to have information like — how are the magnetic fields of the machine are going to react with the human body? It takes a lot of research to make medical equipment before using it on the human body.
And for that exact reason, you’re going to learn about that body.
3. Are there only sales job roles after graduation?
No. Like any other field, this engineering field teaches you a myriad of skills.
Again if I take Mumbai University’s curriculum as an example, we were learning from software programming to robotics. Let me explain this before that alarms you. We had options to choose from. We could take programming (I’ll elaborate more on this in my next post), hospital management, biomaterials (A research field in itself!), mechanics, etc.
All of these areas are vastly different from one another but, are connected through the common goal of solving medical problems through therapeutic machines.
4. It’ll limit you to only one type of skill development
I think you might’ve guessed by now that even this isn’t true.
Since you’ll be learning on all those topics mentioned above, it’ll help open up more career doors for you. I believe it’s only going to help more people who are confused about what they’re looking for in the medical field.
For me personally, I had a lot of fun learning about how these machines work and what kinds of things it does in our body. It fascinated me how radiation therapy cures a disease like cancer, how does a simple concept of physics we learned in high school is applied to save lives?
The field has a lot to offer. The research growth is slower than what people used to predict earlier, but it surely has a strong grip on the medical universe.
Okay so before I let you go, here’s another piece of advice — Do a lot more research. Look for what’s best suited to you. Try and read as many more articles and blogs as you can. And as I mentioned above, it’s a field with multiple possibilities ahead. So keeping that mind of yours open is certainly the way to go.
