NIH PAR-22-000: 2023 Team-Based Design in Biomedical Engineering Education (R25 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

The overarching goal of this R25 program is to support educational activities that complement and/or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs. To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on:

• Courses for Skills Development: For example, courses and programs that use a team-based design approach which incorporates health equity, universal design (the purposeful design of products and environments to be useable by people of varying abilities and characteristics), design concepts early in educational activities, interaction between design students at different career/education levels, and state-of-the-art best practices (such as multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary education, the regulatory pathway and other issues related to the commercialization of medical devices), and further enhances these with novel creative and/or ground-breaking approaches and activities which will be implemented and evaluated with the goal of disseminating the outcomes for the benefit of the larger biomedical engineering education community. Programs may also include a clinical immersion experience that enhances skills and experiences in needs finding, communication across disciplines (including with healthcare providers, patients, caregivers, and/or communities), ideation coupled with frequent clinical/user feedback, and/or small projects to address minor, immediately solvable needs.
• NIBIB Statement of Interest: NIBIB interests include the development and integration of advanced bioengineering, sensing, imaging, and computational technologies for the improvement of human health and medical care. With this FOA, in addition to the goals described above NIBIB especially encourages courses and programs that incorporate the following topics: 1) Expanding the design perspective by designing for low resource settings; 2) Expanding the clinical immersion perspective by incorporating community-based engagement or emphasizing problem driven solutions; and, 3) Expanding the team perspective by including students from disciplines such as nursing, computer engineering, data science, and/or public health, as well as different education levels.

Applications are encouraged from institutions that propose to establish new or to enhance existing team-based design courses or programs in undergraduate biomedical engineering departments or other degree-granting programs with biomedical engineering tracks/minors. This FOA targets the education of undergraduate biomedical engineering/bioengineering students in a team-based environment. Health equity and universal design topics must be integrated throughout the educational activities. While current best practices such as multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary education, introduction to the regulatory pathway and other issues related to the commercialization of medical devices, and clinical immersion remain encouraged components of a strong BME program, this FOA also challenges institutions to propose other novel, innovative and/or ground-breaking activities that can form the basis of the next generation of biomedical engineering design education.