Board 15: Work in Progress: Streamlining the Biomedical Engineering Design Process

Olga Imas; Jeffrey A. Lamack; Charles S. Tritt; Larry Fennigkoh; Icaro Dos Santos

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Conference: 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Publication Date: June 23, 2018
Start Date: June 23, 2018
End Date: July 27, 2018
Conference Session: Biomedical Division Poster Session
Tagged Division: Biomedical Engineering
Page Count: 5
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--29952
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/29952
Download Count: 354

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Paper Authors

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Olga Imas Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Olga Imas, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where she teaches a variety of courses in biomedical digital signal processing, medical imaging, computing in biomedical engineering, biomaterials, anatomy and physiology. In addition to her academic responsibilities, she acts as a consultant to GE Healthcare for product development with emphasis on advanced imaging applications for neurology, cardiology, and oncology. Olga’s technical areas of expertise include signal and imaging processing, and statistical analysis. In her previous and current product development roles, Olga gained extensive experience in clinical product management involving market analysis for new and existing imaging products, and clinical product marketing. She has experience in managing product evaluations at multiple clinical sites, and has a comprehensive knowledge of neurology, oncology, and cardiology imaging markets. She has established a number of strong collaborations with clinical experts in recognized neuroimaging and oncology centers.

Olga has earned her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1999, and a doctorate degree in biomedical engineering and functional imaging from the Joint Functional Imaging program at Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin in 2004. Prior to entering academia full-time in 2009, Olga completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in anesthesiology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where she studied the effects of general anesthetic agents on brain function. She then worked at GE Healthcare as a product development specialist in CT and Molecular Imaging with emphasis on post-processing software applications for neurology, oncology, and cardiology. Olga has over twenty peer-reviewed publications and three pending patents. Her professional interests include physiological mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, anesthetic ablation of consciousness, and applicability of medical imaging in stroke and brain trauma.

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Jeffrey A. Lamack Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Dr. LaMack teaches full-time in the Biomedical Engineering program in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the MIlwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). His areas of specialty include biophysical transport phenomena, biocomputing, physiology, and engineering design. Dr. LaMack holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, and he is an alumnus of the Biology Scholars Program of the American Society of Microbiology. Prior to becoming focused on engineering education, his research interests included hemodynamics and the study of how vascular cells respond to fluid forces and its implications in vascular pathologies.

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Charles S. Tritt Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Dr. Tritt is the past director of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) program at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). He has been teaching at MSOE since 1990. His Ph.D. is in Chemical Engineering from the Ohio State University as is his B.S. degree. He holds an M.S. in BME, also from Ohio State. His research interests include BME applications of embedded systems (specifically involving the mbed OS); biomedical mass, heat and momentum transfer; medical product and process modeling; biomaterials; and entrepreneurship, innovation and commercialization in engineering education.

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Larry Fennigkoh P.E. Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Dr. Larry Fennigkoh is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in medical instrumentation, biomedical engineering design, biomechanics, biostatistics, and human physiology. He is a Registered Professional Engineer and board certified in clinical engineering. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers, Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, American College of Clinical Engineering, American Society for Engineering Education, and an inducted Fellow within both the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American College of Clinical Engineering.

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Icaro Dos Santos Milwaukee School of Engineering

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Abstract

The ABET criterion 5 requires an undergraduate engineering program to incorporate and assess the outcomes of its capstone design process. Our BME program incorporates a design process, which focuses on the systems engineering approach and includes key industrial design phases such as project definition, system-level design, prototype development, and verification and validation. In the latest curricular change, we reduced the duration of the capstone design sequence by three academic quarters, and delayed its start to the spring term of the junior year, with system design and prototype building phases to be completed during senior year. In part, this change was introduced to alleviate challenges and frustration experienced by the students on the old design track and expressed in course evaluations and senior exit surveys. Sophomore and junior students found it challenging to proceed to design and prototype-building phases of the project without having completed essential engineering courses offered later in junior and senior years. As a result, the students spent long periods of time unable to move forward with their project and often experienced interpersonal problems on their teams. Furthermore, as sophomore and junior years contain the most challenging courses in our BME curriculum, the teams experienced the most turnover during that time as some students transitioned out of the program or fell behind on their track. The students were also unable to devote as much time to design as necessary, adding to their level of frustration and reducing their likelihood of success in design. This change also addressed the feedback from our industry partners, who emphasized that industry-commissioned design projects typically require shorter timelines that do not align well with our extended design track. To address the abovementioned challenges, we reduced the duration of our senior design course sequence to four academic quarters (9 credits). Professional BME topics related to medical device development such as new product definition, FDA and international regulatory compliance, design controls, medical device standards, quality control in medical device manufacturing, and healthcare economics originally taught throughout the old design sequence, are no longer part of the new design track. These topics are now taught in the dedicated new course Professional Topics in Biomedical Engineering, which is offered one quarter prior to the start of the design sequence and is well positioned to prepare the students for successful transition into design. In the first quarter of the new sequence, the students are expected to apply their knowledge from the Professional Topics course to define their projects and develop system design specifications. In three remaining quarters, the teams proceed to design, build and test their device prototypes. Currently, our BME senior class is completing the last year of the old sequence, and the junior class will be starting on the new design track in the spring quarter of this academic year. Future survey data will be collected from the old and new track cohorts to determine whether the learning outcomes and the students’ attitudes toward design have improved compared to the old approach.

Citation
Format

Imas, O., & Lamack, J. A., & Tritt, C. S., & Fennigkoh, L., & Dos Santos, I. (2018, June), Board 15: Work in Progress: Streamlining the Biomedical Engineering Design Process Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--29952

TY - CPAPER
AB - The ABET criterion 5 requires an undergraduate engineering program to incorporate and assess the outcomes of its capstone design process. Our BME program incorporates a design process, which focuses on the systems engineering approach and includes key industrial design phases such as project definition, system-level design, prototype development, and verification and validation. In the latest curricular change, we reduced the duration of the capstone design sequence by three academic quarters, and delayed its start to the spring term of the junior year, with system design and prototype building phases to be completed during senior year.
In part, this change was introduced to alleviate challenges and frustration experienced by the students on the old design track and expressed in course evaluations and senior exit surveys. Sophomore and junior students found it challenging to proceed to design and prototype-building phases of the project without having completed essential engineering courses offered later in junior and senior years. As a result, the students spent long periods of time unable to move forward with their project and often experienced interpersonal problems on their teams. Furthermore, as sophomore and junior years contain the most challenging courses in our BME curriculum, the teams experienced the most turnover during that time as some students transitioned out of the program or fell behind on their track. The students were also unable to devote as much time to design as necessary, adding to their level of frustration and reducing their likelihood of success in design. This change also addressed the feedback from our industry partners, who emphasized that industry-commissioned design projects typically require shorter timelines that do not align well with our extended design track.
To address the abovementioned challenges, we reduced the duration of our senior design course sequence to four academic quarters (9 credits). Professional BME topics related to medical device development such as new product definition, FDA and international regulatory compliance, design controls, medical device standards, quality control in medical device manufacturing, and healthcare economics originally taught throughout the old design sequence, are no longer part of the new design track. These topics are now taught in the dedicated new course Professional Topics in Biomedical Engineering, which is offered one quarter prior to the start of the design sequence and is well positioned to prepare the students for successful transition into design. In the first quarter of the new sequence, the students are expected to apply their knowledge from the Professional Topics course to define their projects and develop system design specifications. In three remaining quarters, the teams proceed to design, build and test their device prototypes.
Currently, our BME senior class is completing the last year of the old sequence, and the junior class will be starting on the new design track in the spring quarter of this academic year. Future survey data will be collected from the old and new track cohorts to determine whether the learning outcomes and the students’ attitudes toward design have improved compared to the old approach.

AU - Olga Imas
AU - Jeffrey A. Lamack
AU - Charles S. Tritt
AU - Larry Fennigkoh P.E.
AU - Icaro Dos Santos
CY - Salt Lake City, Utah
DA - 2018/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Board 15: Work in Progress: Streamlining the Biomedical Engineering Design Process
UR - https://peer.asee.org/29952
DO - 10.18260/1-2--29952
ER -