Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 2554

Integrating Biomedical Engineering with Entrepreneurship and Management: An Undergraduate Experience

Robert H. Allen, Lawrence B. Aronhime, Artin A. Shoukas, John C. Wierman Johns Hopkins University

Abstract

We describe aspects of our cross-disciplinary efforts between biomedical engineering and entrepreneurship and management. Specifically, we describe how these disparate programs are being integrated to encourage interaction between students, faculty and administrators to develop technical prototypes with market potential. In biomedical engineering, a design program is in place where 10-13 teams of 10 undergraduate students each work on independent projects annually posed by sponsors such as researchers, clinicians and individuals in need. The design projects culminate in a prototype and final report. About ¼ to ½ of these projects have potential for commercial application. In entrepreneurship and management, a program exists where teams of between three and five undergraduate students develop business plans for ideas that are proposed to them by biomedical engineering students. Business plans for projects with commercial potential examine factors necessary to convert the project idea into a viable enterprise. Such issues include market size, revenue and reimbursement, market penetration strategies, costs of operations, legal issues, return on investment, roles of the founding entrepreneurs, sources of funding, harvest strategies, and negotiating deals. To date, four technical teams have successfully collaborated with entrepreneurship teams to generate a prototype and an associated business plan to market a product based on the prototype.

1. Introduction

Within the last two decades, engineering and business educators alike have seen the need to emphasize learning by doing in the undergraduate curriculum [Simon, 1981]. In engineering curricula, this has resulted in a plethora of design and capstone courses [Dixon, 1991], while in business curricula, this has led to a host of courses where students develop their own business plans and interact with industry. With this emphasis on the practical, educators have scrambled to solicit realistic projects from industrial, clinical or research sponsors. One way to ease this scramble is to use realistic projects from engineering as potential projects for those in entrepreneurship and management. This paper describes such an effort and begins with a description of the two programs followed by how they have been integrated.

2. Existing Programs

Over the last five years, the biomedical engineering program at Johns Hopkins University has

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition © Copyright 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

John, W., & Artin, S., & Allen, R., & Aronhime, L. (2003, June), Integrating Biomedical Engineering With Entrepreneurship And Management At The Undergraduate Level Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11694