Want to impact humanity and protect its health? Improve quality of life? Being a Bio-medical Engineer is a great opportunity to reach this goal. According to the US department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of biomedical engineers is expected to increase faster than the average for all occupations through 2012. Hence, if you are considering your career in bioengineering field, you definitely are in the right career path.

Bioengineering (also called biomedical engineering) combines engineering expertise with medical needs for the enhancement of health care. Those working within the bioengineering field are working with living system and apply advanced technology to the complex problems of medical care. In general, biomedical engineers create everything from wheel chairs to artificial hearts to contact lenses.

Job Functions

Being a biomedical engineer, you may be called upon to design medical instruments and devices such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the heart pacemaker, kidney dialysis and the heart-lung machine. In additional, you may need to carry out researches to acquire new knowledge needed to solve new medical problems. Bioengineering field covers a wide specialty areas, among the well know specialty areas include bioinstrumentation, biomedical, biomechanics, clinical engineering, rehabilitation engineering. You can set your career path to any of these specialties in bioengineering.

Doctors, nurses and physicians are among your working partners if you work as a biomedical engineer in hospitals or any medical service centers. You need to work closely with them as a team to solve a wide range of challenges. If you work in laboratory at industry or any research center, you will work along with life scientists, chemists, and medical scientists, to develop and evaluate systems and products for use in the fields of biology and health, such as artificial organs instrumentation, medical information systems, and health management and care delivery systems.

Education Requirements

The biomedical engineering student should first plan to become a good engineer who then acquires a working understanding of the life sciences and terminology. In college, prospective biomedical engineers usually select engineering as a field of study, and then choose a discipline concentration within engineering. Some students will major in biomedical engineering, while others may major in chemical, electrical, or mechanical engineering with a specialty in biomedical engineering.

Employment

Biomedical engineers are employed in industry primarily in the pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing and medical instruments and supplies industries, in hospitals as clinical engineer, in research facilities of educational and medical institutions, in teaching, and in government regulatory agencies.

Earnings

Median annual earnings of biomedical engineers with a bachelors degree were $48,503 in 2004; those with a masters degree earned $59, 667. The middle 50 percent earned around $70, 500. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $41,260 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $107,530.

In Summary

Employment of biomedical engineer is expected to boom in next 5 years in line with the demand for more sophisticated medical equipment. The increase concerns on cost efficiency and effectiveness will also boost demand for biomedical engineers. Hence, bioengineering is a great career path for you if you interest in this field.