If you were asked who is responsible for designing and maintaining an MRI, what would your answer be? An electrical engineer? A radiologist? The fact of the matter is that many of today’s medical technologies are well beyond the scope of knowledge for the average doctor researcher or engineer. This is where the biomedical engineer comes in. Biomedical engineering jobs involve working at the cutting edge of the biology-technology interface, and biomedical engineers are responsible for the design and upkeep of almost all of the medical profession’s most demanding and critical technological applications.
Since biomedical engineering jobs require expertise in so many, usually unrelated fields, it might be difficult figuring out what kind of training you will need to fit the niche. Only recently have programs in universities been developed that are specifically tuned for biomedical engineering jobs and degrees. For much of the past half a century, biomedical engineers were simply engineers who continued their education in fields of biological sciences or vise versa. Interestingly, many early biomedical engineers may have been doctors with tremendous inventive spirit and independently-developed mechanical know-how. Today a biomedical engineer is expected to have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and sometimes a master’s degree in interdisciplinary sciences.
There are a number of biomedical engineering undergraduate programs today that specialize in this interdisciplinary field. Biomedical engineering jobs are becoming highly demanded in the health industry, and it’s no wonder it has become such a respected and sought after field in many undergraduate and graduate institutions. Biomedical engineering jobs usually require quite an impressive list of accolades simply because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. A biomedical engineer can be expected to not only design and maintain some of the most technologically advanced pieces of equipment of our age, but will also have to juggle the responsibility of making the technology suitable for coordination with the human body and organism. Be it the tunnel that accepts patients in the MRI or an artificial heart, biomedical engineers are expected to know precisely how the body and its systems work.
There are boards of certification which offer accreditation to biomedical engineers and biomedical engineering programs. One of the most important boards involved in accreditation within the general engineering field is ABET, or Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, and it has developed special consideration for biomedical engineering. ABET lists over 40 undergraduate programs specifically accredited for biomedical engineering. As with all engineers, they are expected to be generally licensed, even though many of the engineering licensing examinations do not yet include a section specifically for the biomedical sector.
For one to be competitive in the field of biomedical engineering, it is usually a tremendous advantage, if not a necessity, to have a post-graduate degree in the field. This is because of the expansive skills and knowledge required to be an effective biomedical engineer. As a biomedical engineer, you will find that you will be rewarded handsomely for your breadth of knowledge and interdisciplinary skill set. There is a high demand for biomedical engineers to fill the varied and numerous biomedical engineering jobs which are currently available and continually growing. Biomedical engineering jobs also boast some of the best salaries of any engineering field. According to Simply Hired, the average salary for biomedical engineering jobs as of July 2008 is $70,000 per year.
If you can think critically and don't mind continuous study to stay at the cutting edge of your industry, biomedical engineering jobs may offer precisely what you are looking for.
