Assessment of Web-based information needs for medical device design

Medical device development involves interdisciplinary knowledge of engineering and the life sciences. In order to maintain a competitive advantage in the medical device industry, design engineers require extensive and detailed knowledge of engineering and biomedical technology. This underscores the need for continual self-education with the most current technical information. Inadequate access to biomedical information during the design process may have detrimental effects to the designer, leading to critical design delays and even failure to execute design projects. The authors describe the Stanford Health Information Network for Education (SHINE), an integrated Web-based medical information resource that provides instant access to a variety of online biomedical information resources. Users have the means to engage in self-initiated research via an interface enabling simultaneous searches across multiple heterogeneous distributed information databases. Medical device engineers may benefit from accessing such a system that promotes both self-learning and ready access to biomedical information.