Alternative approach to addressing infrastructure needs in biomedical engineering programs (Case of emerging economies)

This paper discusses the ways to develop low budget and high performance laboratory exercises for the purpose of the biomedical engineering education. The proposed methodology is based on the integration of 13 different sensors/actuators, 4 interfaces and 2 software, which are widely available and inexpensive. The proposed components are described separately and then integrated into specific exercises realized as virtual instruments for physiological measurements, vital signs monitoring and biomedical signal processing. Following the proposed methodology the students can use their creativity, and acquired knowledge from other disciplines to design variants of virtual instruments in order to achieve the real-world experience. Also, the economic aspects in terms of the overall system cost and the cost of its reduced variants are outlined. The ratio between the quality and cost shows that proposed approach should be very suitable for biomedical engineering education in developing countries, Keywords: biomedical engineering, education, physiological measurements, sensors, virtual