New Bioelectronics Undergraduate Degree on Offer in 2011

The course

This course is a specialist stream of the existing Undergraduate Engineering program and is designed to meet the needs of the resurgent Australian and overseas bioelectronics and biomedical instrumentation industries and future demands of an aging population by producing graduates with the strongest possible technical skills in this field. It is available from 2011 as a specialist stream in the Bachelor of Engineering program in Electrical Engineering.

Why?

• Biomedical engineering is an interesting area to undergraduate students with some continuing to The Graduate Medical Program at Sydney University.
• Strong opportunities’ for graduates with rising medical costs in an aging population
• The advent of low-cost, personal and electronic medical diagnostics.
• A shift from hospitals to home based health care.
• New challenging health applications require state of the art engineering in circuits, communications, embedded software and collaboration with health sciences.

The Background at The University of Sydney

The University of Sydney has a world recognised track record in medical research that leads to highly successful bioelectronics engineering businesses.  Australia’s two leading medical device manufacturers, Cochlear and Resmed are global leaders in their bio-electronic product areas both with well over half of the market share worldwide and both developed with researchers from our University.  As a University we attract one of the highest levels of funding for medical research in collaboration with over 40 hospitals in Australia. This provides a great opportunity for collaborative teaching, research and for engineers to form clinical collaborations and develop the next globally successful medical device businesses based on bioelectronics.  

What is Bioelectronics?

Bioelectronics is concerned with the use of biological materials and processes in electronic devices, and the use of electronic devices in living systems. It includes medical electronics and medical devices. Biomedical electronic devices and systems are key growth areas of engineering due to the impact increasing medical costs of the aging society. Recent years have seen an explosive growth of research applied to medical problems in the areas of life sciences, physical sciences and engineering. Such activities require inter-disciplinary collaboration between scientists, engineers, medical researchers, and practitioners to solve complex real world problems.  From an engineering perspective bio-electrical circuits and systems are demanding with extreme power limitations, requiring robustness and reliability in a hostile operation environment such as the human body. In applications like implants and personal devices, integration of sensors, electronics and communications for both power and signalling is required. In many ways bio-electrical circuits and systems are challenging the state-of-the-art circuit design, and cross-field collaboration is important for utilizing existing technologies.

Career Prospects

Internationally, Bioelectronics is fast growing area in terms of revenue and career prospects in electrical and information engineering (electronicdesign.com). In the 6 months since May 2008 the demand for Medical Instrumentation jobs increased 30% (simplyhired.com) and the US government predicts that biomedical engineers should experience the fastest growth among all engineers (bls.gov).

“There is a growing list of electronics and information engineering firms with dedicated business units focussing on the healthcare market including Intel, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, IBM, Samsung, Sharp Electronics, Qualcomm, Cisco, Motorola, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Verizon, Vodafone, and Sprint Nextel. Semiconductor companies in the area include including Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Actel, On Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies, Analog Devices, and Cypress Semiconductor.” (electronicdesign.com).

The Australian Federal Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research gives the following description of the medical device industry:
“The global medical devices industry is estimated to be worth US$174 billion, and is growing at approximately 10% per annum. Although Australia's share of the global market is small in absolute terms, it has been growing strongly over the last 10 years. From 1997 to 2006 the value of medical exports has grown by over 200%, faster than the value of imports over the same period, which increased over 160%.  It has been estimated that in 2006-07 the industry employed approximately 11,500 people working in around 1,100 companies. These companies are estimated to have invested $303.6 million in research and development in 2005, with turnover in the 2006-07 financial year of around $4.75 billion. There are particularly strong medical technology industry clusters in Victoria and New South Wales. Many Australian medical device manufacturers are world leaders in their fields. Both ResMed, which develops and manufactures devices to treat sleep apnea, and Cochlear, which has developed and manufactures a range of hearing products, are internationally renowned.  Many smaller Australian companies are also innovation-driven.” (innovation.gov.au)

A recent Federal Government report (innovation.gov.au, May 2008) on the medical device industry found:

• The medical devices value chain is highly reliant on science, engineering and technology (SET) skills.
• The industry is distinguished by its strong growth potential, significant R&D requirements, high levels of regulation, significant export-propensity of domestic manufacturers, increasing reimbursement requirements, and technical channels to market.
• The level of education required by the industry is high. Approximately 33 per cent of the industry have an undergraduate degree or above compared to a national average of 22 per cent in 2005-06.
• R&D intensive firms, including in particular Pre-manufacturing firms, are disproportionately impacted by skills shortages and skills gaps compared to the industry average.
• Recruitment challenges are a function of lack of ‘job readiness’ of new entrants
• Key education and training gaps exist in:
• o engineering graduates’ practical skills development (understanding of regulatory requirements and their impact on the design and product development process, the quality of technical writing skills of engineering graduates, engineering graduates’ knowledge of the patient interface, engineering graduates’ understanding of business aspects of product development and project management)
• o courses in international regulatory requirements for medical devices

Prospective students will experience research led teaching and learning in this course due to the  schools’ track record and ongoing research projects in this field. The computing and auditory laboratory (Carlab) is one of the top ten research labs in the world in this area and the top neuromorphic engineering group in Australia. Its bioelectronics research aims to develop hardware and algorithms to measure and classify biological signals, such as ECG, EMG, EEG, 3D position and location, skin conductivity, and blood oxygenation. We are researching a portable Electronic Impedance Tomography Spectroscopy device which measures tissue impedance to create an image of the tissue impedance distribution. This EITS system can be used for instance for monitoring stroke, epilepsy, and for detecting cancer. The web and software engineering research group use pattern recognition and psychophysiology to inform learning technologies with students' conceptions, perceptions and approaches of learning. These groups have a number of collaborative research projects with the Faculty of Medicine and various hospitals and universities both in NSW and internationally.

Both The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Westmead Hospital regularly take internship biomedical students and are particularly looking for students with bioelectronics or medical device skills and interests.  Resmed, Cochlear and other EIE foundation members already provide internship opportunities for our undergraduates

Australian organisations include:
• Society for Medical and Biological Engineering (SMBE) Australia. http://www.smbe.asn.au/
• http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/colleges/biomedical/biomedical_home.cfm
• Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM)
• The Biomedical Engineering Network (BMENet)
• Australian Society for Medical Research
• Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)

Australian and multi-national companies include:
• Cochlear
• Resmed
• St Jude Medical
• Philips
• General Electric
• Siemans
• Draeger
• Welch Allyn

Professional Registration

There is no legal requirement for licensing or registration for this occupation in Australia (Dept of Immigration).  However as will all areas of professional engineering some employers may request Institute of Engineers Australia (IEAust) charted status or registration on the National Engineering Registration Board (IEAust).  Applicants for these must have significant training in the life sciences, typically 80 hours of formal education which is included in this course.

For further information please go to the Specific Course Details page.