Opportunities to Identify Unmet Needs Outside of the Operating Room [Senior Design]

The ability to identify unmet needs and new product opportunities is an important skill for biomedical engineering students planning a career in the medical device industry. Most biomedical engineering graduates will work in industry where many projects will not be defined for them. They will need to work with physicians, surgeons, nurses, clinical engineers, and other users of medical technology to identify problems and unmet needs and will work closely with marketing, sales, and other personnel to identify new product development opportunities. Students will be better prepared for careers involving the development of new medical devices if they are able to gain experience in the problem identification/needs-finding phase of the design process as part of their undergraduate education.