Why study biomedical engineering as a pre-med major?

When you visit the doctor's office or watch a TV program on hospitals, emergency rooms, and special surgery, aren’t you impressed with how much the medical profession relies heavily on state of the art technology?

Imaging technology, such as Computerized Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), were developed by engineers. Minimally invasive surgery seems to have taken over traditional surgery, thanks to technology. For example, biomedical engineers have developed laser equipment for sophisticated surgical procedures and endoscopic fiber optic devices that can be guided through the digestive tract to identify tumors and remove them. One can even observe the inside of the knee or the abdomen with an endoscope and remove damaged tissue without having to cut the skin. Robots are used nowadays in hospital operating theaters to perform precision surgery. Also, telesurgery and tele-medicine facilitate remote participation by an expert surgeon and monitoring patients in their own homes. These are only a few examples of the technological revolution facilitated by biomedical engineering.

Biomedical engineering is the most natural course of study to get you into medical school and guide you towards a rich and exciting medical career. There may be an easier way to become a physician or health professional, but as a high achiever, you'd rather do it the right way. In biomedical engineering, you will learn about biology and the anatomy and physiology of the human body and its systems in a way that nobody else teaches it. Equipped with your engineering skills, you will truly learn medicine, and your mind will constantly alert you: here is something that I can do to improve, to design, to make a difference.

If you want to be at the forefront of your medical specialty, it is not enough to use the technology. You have to understand the technology, innovate, and contribute to new developments. All the pioneers in the medical and health professions had to participate in the development of their equipment. Can you appreciate the great advantage that you gain from studying biomedical engineering as a pre-med?

Prominent physicians and health professionals do research to innovate and advance their professions. Biomedical engineering teaches you to understand the human body and to understand what kind of equipment you need to use to do your research, as well as use your engineering skills to understand the meaning of the results of you experiments.

We at Drexel’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems teach you biomedical sensing for diagnostics and therapy. Should you want to embark on the challenge of making a paralyzed person walk, we will teach you neuroengineering. If combating arthritis and disability is an area in which you would like to specialize, we will teach you how to develop surgical techniques for joint replacement and design artificial limbs. Above all, our tissue engineers will teach you how to re-grow the real tissue and, hopefully, the real organ. Also, if for some reason your medical plans change, you will still have a solid biomedical engineering background that you can turn into an exciting and profitable professional career.

Please explore our Concentration Areas to see the challenging work that our faculty is doing and to learn about life at Drexel.