Novel "Impacts of Biomedical Innovations" Course Integrates Ethics

Biomedical technology promises to improve our health and well-being. Curiously, some promising technologies have threatened our sacrosanct right to privacy, offended our disabled citizens, and provided fodder for our tort system. A novel course, Impacts of Biomedical Innovations, challenges students to critically evaluate existing medical devices and biomedical technologies, including their benefits, and intended and unintended effects on healthcare and legal systems, public policy, and society. Later, students apply what they have learned to assess novel and emerging technologies. Furthermore, they discover ways scientists, legislators, lawyers, ethicists, industry leaders and engineers address biomedical device and technology issues. Ethical issues have been woven into class discussions and coursework. For example, students examined healthcare inequities in the African American community using a set of videotaped talks given by a civil rights lawyer, a surgeon and a biomedical engineer. The students then created discussion guides for use with these videos. In another example, students debated whether or not biomedical engineers should create devices to aid in judicial executions. This debate involved discussions of whether or not it is ethical to end the life of another human being, and if biomedical engineers should be bound by the Hippocratic oath. This course has been taught four times at the undergraduate and/or graduate level. At the graduate level, students select the last four topics. The methodology used in this class ranged from small group discussions to mock Congressional testimonies. Sample topics and methodologies used in this course will be presented in this talk.