Biomedical Engineering
A definition

Edward T. Woodruff has experience in Biomedical Engineering.  This sheet is information for your interest and edification.  Please see Home and Accomplishments for our major results and contributions.

Biomedical Engineering is the application of engineering principles and procedures for design to problems of a medical nature in humans. The biomedical engineering field covers the disciplines of biochemical engineering, biomechanical engineering and bioelectrical engineering. All of these disciplines make up the field of biomedical engineering.

The Grace Research Division, in the 1990's  developed technology in the biomedical arena.  This brought Edward  T. Woodruff into the world of  Biomedical Engineering.  The projects that we worked on included the artificial pancreas, the LDL device and the LAD device.  These products used hollow fiber membranes to separate the human's blood flow from the (biologically) active components on the shell side of the membrane.  The artificial pancreas idea was to be an implantable that would generate insulin for diabetics.  The LDL device would be outside the body and used to remove Cholesterol from the blood stream.  The LAD device was explored to assist cancer patients whose liver function was in bad shape.

Biomedical engineering is an important item of the time in which we now live. There are many diseases and maladies humans find themselves in where the field of biomedical engineering may well help solve their problems. For the discipline of biochemical engineering as applied to biomedical engineering there is the area of implants. For biomedical engineering these include woven acrylic artificial arteries to prevent blood clotting too rapidly in arterial blood vessels. Biomedical engineering saw the development of silicone capsules to protect cardiac pacemakers and to allow their integration into the human tissue. Biomedical engineering produced the artificial kidney for patients beyond recovery otherwise.

Biomedical engineering has seen other advances in technology for human health and safety. Biomedical engineering developments achieved by the bioelectrical engineer include the pacemaker, the defibrillator, and the electrocardiograph. Other biomedical engineering developments are from the biomechanical engineer .and consist of the iron lung, artificial implants, artificial limbs, and artificial hearts.

All of this is achieved under the term biomedical engineering.

See also biomedical engineer and biomedical process design.

Also see Accomplishments.