2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

BOARD # 20: Work in Progress: A Formal Medical Device Teardown as a Biomedical Engineering Learning Experience

Presented at Biomedical Engineering Division (BED) Poster Session

This manuscript describes a course project that guides each biomedical engineering (BME) student through the scripted teardown of an inexpensive medical device: a fingerclip pulse oximeter. Supporting objectives are to increase a student’s experience with the physical resources required to complete such a task, coupled with an improved awareness of the documentation needed to properly archive the process. The project addresses medical device user manuals, product priority dates, accuracy assessment, clinical device studies, regulation, component design, and manufacturing. Students also address ethical implications of teardowns, including the dissemination of the resulting device information. Pre/post-project surveys help to assess student self-perceptions of learning, and summative learning assessments based on topical rubrics are underway. To date, the month-long project has been utilized with 48 students enrolled in three offerings of a three-credit, senior-level, one-semester BME 575 – Clinical Systems Engineering course at Kansas State University as a means to introduce students to medical device development issues that they may not otherwise consider prior to employment.

Authors

Dr. Steve Warren Ph.D. Kansas State University [biography]

Steve Warren received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University (KSU) in 1989 and 1991, respectively, followed by a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 1994. Dr. Warren is a Professor in the KSU Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and he serves as the Program Coordinator for the KSU Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Degree Program. Prior to joining KSU in August 1999, Dr. Warren was a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. He directs the KSU Medical Component Design Laboratory, a facility partially funded by the National Science Foundation that provides resources for the research and development of distributed medical monitoring technologies and learning tools that support biomedical contexts. His research focuses on (1) plug-and-play, point-of-care medical monitoring systems that utilize interoperability standards, (2) wearable sensors and signal processing techniques for the determination of human and animal physiological status, and (3) educational tools and techniques that maximize learning and student interest. Dr. Warren is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Dr. Charles Carlson http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-4293-3090 Kansas State University [biography]

Charles Carlson received a B.S. degree in physics from Fort Hays State University in 2013, and B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering (EE) from Kansas State University (KSU) in 2013, 2015, and 2019, respectively. In 2015, from January to July, he worked as a radio frequency engineer at Black & Veatch in Kansas City. He is currently a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Mike Wiegers Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS). He is a faculty co-advisor for the K-State IEEE EMBS student chapter.

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