Engineering Better Health Care

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These biosensors and imaging tools will differentiate between healthy cells and abnormal ones, be able to 'read' tissues without requiring numerous biopsies and micro-sample the tissues and surrounding fluid.

The idea is that these biomedical engineering devices – based on biophotonics, microelectronics, nanotechnology, wireless communications and other leading-edge systems – will detect and be part of the treatment of early-stage diseases. The hope is that they will trim the distance, and the costs, between lab and bedside and be kinder to the patient in the bargain.

For example, a wireless sensor contained on a 'micro-lab' pill that can be swallowed -- moving through the intestines via natural peristaltic contractions - is far less invasive than a colonoscopy, notes biophotonics expert Qiyin Fang, of the engineering physics department at McMaster University.

Such a device would analyze the different light wavelengths absorbed and emitted by internal tissues. An onboard highly sensitive imaging system and micro-electromechanical elements would separate the wavelengths, a lab-on-a-chip analyzes the signals in real time, and wireless technology sends the information to a remote receiver.

"The possibilities are limited by your imagination and by the need, of course," says Jamal Deen, head of the micro and nano-systems centre at the Hamilton University. Reducing imaging and detection costs will increase the frequency of screening and lead to early detection and treatment of several ailments, adds Ravi Selvaganapathy, an assistant professor in the school's mechanical engineering department.

This innovation is the work of an inter-university team – industry and government players are also on board – that includes the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto. The $10.6 million initiative also takes in clinicians in Hamilton and Toronto, including engineer-clinician Louis Liu at University Health Network in Toronto.

They are all on the frontlines of a revolution that is sweeping though medicine. Problem-solving engineers and medical researchers and health professionals are meeting at several conjoined intersections - engineering, mathematics, medicine, physics, biology and chemistry and information technologies - in the areas of diagnostics and imaging, therapies, biomaterial implants and prostheses.

Of course, biomed engineering is not new. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health had an artificial heart program in the 1960s, said John Brash, director of the new school of biomedical engineering at McMaster and a biomed pioneer himself. A chemical engineer regarded as an international authority on the interactions of biomaterials with proteins and blood cells, Brash was doing biomed work in California on developing membranes for dialysis in that same 1960s decade.

A hallmark of biomedical engineering is its overarching reach across disciplines, the crumbling of silos, as more and more life scientists and physical scientists begin speaking each other’s languages. A relatively recent development is new educational programs in which students with backgrounds in life sciences are trained alongside engineering majors.

"I think it really is a happening time, if I can use that phrase," said Brash, looking out his window at an excavation for a new engineering building that will contain lab facilities for the school, including a nano-systems lab. "You can see the expansion going on all over the place. There's a large interest among students."

The biomed boom has been fuelled by the convergence of dramatic changes in microelectronics and molecular biology.

Processes used in microelectrical-mechanical systems (MEMS), for example, led to miniaturization technology that played a large role in DNA sequencing and molecular diagnostics. Now, micro-lab devices can be used in fluid filtration, DNA extraction, imaging and in other detection systems.

The curriculum areas at biomed engineering schools reflect that rich tapestry. At McMaster, the new school's diversified theme areas include medical robotics, biomaterials, tissue engineering, biomechanics, medical imaging and biomedical technology, including biophotonics.

The beauty of all this convergence is that, as different technologies are incorporated in a sensor or screening device, the upgraded sensors can be retrofitted to existing systems, such as an upper GI tract imaging catheter. Sensor and detection packages can be replaced – almost like bits on a screwdriver – as they get updated, to perform better or to take on new roles.

Progress is being driven both by clinical pull, as necessity demands solutions to problems, and by technology push, as innovations in tools and systems are adapted to medicine. The federal Public Health Agency is helping the Ontario inter-university team interface with the private sector, said Deen, as the work moves from premise to proof to prototype.

In the more populous U.S., the well for biomed funds has always been deeper. For example, there is no Canadian parallel to the Whitaker Foundation, which handed out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to Canadian and American scientists and institutions before wrapping up last year.

In part, the Whitaker foundation recognized that the dual-identity engineering and medicine field found it tough to solicit government monies. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health often rejected bioengineering proposals because they had either too much medicine content or too much engineering substance in them.

But dynamic gains brought governments onside. In Canada, such government bodies as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council provide funds. There are also programs such as the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund. Bodies such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation also fund research.

The private sector – involved for years in the engineering of new drugs – is also putting up money or in-kind aid, such as equipment. Among the companies working with the inter-university group, for example, is Waterloo-based Research in Motion. Funds from industry surface when new systems and technologies get to prototype and beyond, when entrepreneurial spinoffs take form. That’s when biomed research goes from proving ground to market.

Mike Pettapiece, a journalist for more than 30 years, most recently at the Toronto Star, writes and edits the newsletter for the Golden Horseshoe Biosciences Network, based at McMaster University in Hamilton.