As test equipment continues to advance, the willingness of medical equipment manufacturers and biomedical test equipment manufacturers to work together to integrate their respective software that will greatly increase the accuracy of diagnosing and certifying equipment as well as reducing the amount of time it takes to do so. Fluke has done a phenomenal job doing so with their IDA infusion testers. It is not necessarily one manufacturer or technology, but the partnerships that continue to expand that will greatly impact biomedical engineering.
Host at Biomedical Frontiers: Stories with Innovators in Healthcare Podcast
Answered 2 years ago
Protein Engineering aided by AI technologies is an emerging biomedical technology that will have transformative effects not only on the pharmaceutical industry but also on other industries that use protein based materials. Several recent discoveries and advances are particularly notable: long-chain amino acid manufacturing, AI based protein design, and design of enzymes and proteins previously unseen in nature. Today, biological engineers are starting to be able to design amino acid chains based on requirements and specifications and manufacture them at scale and with consistent quality. This is revolutionary because proteins are extremely complex structures that in the past required significant study and wet-lab experiments to modify. Nearly 95% of drug targets are proteins and already around 25% of drugs are themselves proteins. Enzymes, which are biological catalysts, are also proteins. Being able to design and build custom proteins quickly could make new drug development much cheaper, including personalized drug development for treatment of rare diseases or cancers. Proteins could also be designed to participate in reactions like an enzyme - for example to break down waste products into useful products. This is an exciting area of engineering the full potential of which is difficult to imagine. I believe the impact will be akin to the discovery and development of plastics in terms of how many industries it will effect and the variety of applications of this technology that will be discovered.
Quantum computing has the potential to accelerate computation in biomedical engineering. Based on quantum mechanics principles, quantum computing can perform complex calculations more efficiently than traditional computers, and in problems where there is a high computational complexity, we could see application of quantum computing to solve complex problems. For example, the simulation of the interactions between molecules, analysis of large-scale genomics, understanding protein folding and misfolding, systems biology network analysis, complex biological pathways, and discovery of drugs by predicting behavior are all areas with significant potential for quantum to be a great benefit. By leveraging quantum algorithms, we could conduct faster searches in vast genomic data, tackle complex optimization problems in protein folding, gain a deeper understanding of molecular properties and reactions, and map systems more easily.
3D bioprinting is still in its infancy, but the creation of complex biological tissues and structures using living cells as the ink is not only something that was thought to be in the realm of sci-fi, it could very well revolutionize areas like regenerative medicine and organ transplantation in the next handful of years. With 3D bioprinting, biomedical engineers are working toward fabricating functional tissues such as skin, bone, and even organs, addressing the critical shortage of transplantable organs and reducing the risk of rejection by using a patient’s own cells. Further developed, it can completely flip large aspects of the medical field on its head beyond just organ transplantation, however. Bioprinted tissues, for example, can be used for drug testing and medical research, providing a more accurate representation of how human tissues respond to treatments, potentially speeding up the development of new therapies. There is so much potential, which makes it an incredibly exciting technology to follow.
I would emphasize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its transformative role in the field. AI enhances personalized medicine, allowing for tailored treatment plans that improve patient outcomes and create marketing opportunities for specialized medical products. A key strategy would be to utilize content marketing to inform audiences about these innovations and their benefits.
CRISPR gene-editing technology gets brought up a lot as the future of biomed engineering, and it is with good reason that we will be hearing about it for the foreseeable future. Despite that, I still consider CRISPR to be an emerging technology because, despite the advancements we've already seen, I feel like we've just barely scratched the surface of what it will be able to do in the future. It already allows for precise editing of genetic material, offering the potential to cure genetic diseases, tailor medical treatments to individual patients, and even enhanced drug discovery processes. What will it be able to do in the future? There are bodies that are already looking into fields such as personalized medicine, where doctors could one day correct mutations in a patient’s DNA that cause specific diseases - essentially the holy grail of the entire field, and we can see it becoming a reality.
One emerging technology that will significantly impact biomedical engineering is advanced AI-driven diagnostics. By integrating machine learning algorithms with medical imaging and patient data, we can achieve faster and more accurate diagnoses, enabling earlier interventions. This will not only improve patient outcomes but also streamline healthcare processes, reducing costs and enhancing precision in personalized medicine.