Will Your Next Doctor Be a Physicianeer?

All too often in the medical device field, a product that looks really cool ends up failing because it doesn't actually address an unmet need or because the developers didn't do enough collaboration with physicians to make the technology adoptable. The ever-growing need to have cross-functional teams in medtech led to an interesting panel discussion this week at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX. "As things get more complex you just can't have engineers that don't talk to physicians or don't understand anatomical challenges," said Joseph Frassica, MD, head of Philips Research, Americas and the chief medical officer at Royal Philips North America where he leads a broad-based medical, science, and technology team in an effort to bring clinically meaningful innovation to the bedside. Learn about new product development trends at BIOMEDevice Boston, April 18-19, 2018. Use promo code "MDDI" for 20% off conference registration and free expo access.  Texas A&M University has found a rather progressive solution to this problem. In collaboration with Houston Methodist Hospital, the university is planning to launch a new engineering-based medical degree program that is expected to enroll its inaugural class in 2019. The program, dubbed EnMed, is designed to train a new kind of physician called a physicianeer. Graduates of the program will have both a medical degree and an engineering degree. "This will be a physician who understands technology and what technology...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: R & D Source Type: news