Seminars

Engineers have always played an important role within product R&D of medical device companies. However, within the biopharmaceutical sector engineers have not always been considered primary contributors within research and development. More often, although not exclusively, their important contributions were within process development, industrial operations and other fields. But the biopharmaceutical industry’s well known productivity struggles has caused it to look critically at how it can better translate discoveries into medical value for patients. The result of this self-examination might be surprising–unless perhaps you are an engineer. We now talk about having integrated project team members with many different backgrounds, including engineers, in order to bring more creative and innovative problem solving. Engineers are critical team members from the early stages of discovery where we often approach basic biology from a systems perspective and employ design of experiments to help identify the best path forward for improving assays or assessing complex pharmacology. We also recognize the importance of improving the process of R&D by adapting engineering principles for operational excellence that reduce cycle times and raise overall organizational efficiency. The growing importance of engineering in the biopharmaceutical industry provides new and exciting opportunities for biomedical engineers to make significant contributions to patient health.