Cultivate the Problem Exploration Skills for Biomedical Innovation

The majority of engineering students perceive themselves merely as problem solvers and are less concerned about finding a problem. However, the lack of ability to find a valuable problem from the real world is one of the major causes of invention failure. Problem finding is absent in most engineering curricula, even in design courses because most problems are still provided by a client or instructor. To address the need for training the next-generation of innovators, we developed an undergraduate elective, Biomedical Innovation, in which Industrial Engineering students teamed with medical students to identify authentic problems of clinical significance and propose engineering solutions. This course, which asks students to analyze the mechanism and scope of a problem-a skill highly desired for its potential in innovation and entrepreneurship-fills a unique curricular gap. The survey of learning experiences showed statistically significant differences between pre- and post-course scores in self-efficacies, which suggests that students saw improvement in the ratings of their learning in five target areas: (A) background research skills, (B) critical thinking and ideation, (C) project management and teamwork, (D) technical communication skills, and (E) interest in medical engineering.