I read with great interest the Perspective by Roger Kneebone and Claudia Schlegel,1 and I agree about the pigeon-holed approach to medical education.1 COVID-19 has shown clinicians and engineers working side by side to ensure health-care worker safety via personal protective equipment and the management of patients through ventilators.
Engineering platforms are used to diagnose and treat patients. Clinicians use the endoscope, the CT scan, dialysis machines, cardiac stents, etc, yet have little understanding about how these devices are made or work.
The Clinician Engineer Hub is a global network aimed at bridging the gap between medicine and engineering. The hub offers workshops, research opportunities, and industry-based opportunities for medical students, and early career doctors to ensure they are given the chance to gain knowledge and skills in engineering. Students within the network are empowered to serve as leaders. To date, we have held summer and winter schools, multiple webinars, a 3-day conference, and offered collaborations with researchers in laboratories or through industry internships. Webinars have included topics such as biomechanics, optics, coding, and aerospace engineering. Our conference featuring academic experts globally and industry members—from Google Health, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services as well as WHO—gained considerable interest (20 million impressions via Twitter).
Later this year, we will be holding a virtual hackathon—ClinHacks—aimed at innovative engineering solutions to health care.
As Kneebone and Schlegel highlight, medical education is typically funnel based and I fully endorse the need for “funnel perforation”.1
© 2021 Steve Parsons/Getty Images
Acknowledgments
NS is founder and director of the Clinician Engineer Hub.
Reference
- 1.Kneebone R, Schlegel C. Thinking across disciplinary boundaries in a time of crisis. Lancet. 2021;397:89–90. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32757-4. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]