Semester

Semester 1, 2020

• Bryan Ruddy (director, coordinator)

Omkar Athavale (Teaching Assistant)

Lectures: Monday 11:00-12:00, Tuesday 11:00-12:00, Wednesday 17:00-18:00; Room 405-442
Reserved project laboratory hours: Thursday 10:00-12:00; Room 402-231

An engineering project requiring the application and integration of material taught in lecture courses to the design of medical devices and software to meet client needs. The project also requires consideration of ethical issues, social impact, safety risks, and international regulations.
Prerequisite: BIOMENG 341

Further notes

Lectures cover the medical industry; the product lifecycle; intellectual property; the regulatory environment and standards; ethical, societal, sustainability and risk issues in medical devices; software engineering practice; ergonomics, manufacturing and commercial considerations. Academic staff and guest lecturers from industry will conduct classes.

Design Project:

Each team of 4 or 5 students will consult with a commercial/clinical client to address a complex biomedical engineering problem, with guidance from an academic or industry mentor.

Philosophy:

A complex, integrative biomedical engineering design experience. Specifically, a successful design will require integration of knowledge from across the breadth of the biomedical engineering curriculum, including solid and fluid mechanics, instrumentation, mathematical modelling, and the medical sciences. In the real world, though, successful designs are about more than pure scientific and technical know-­how; a good design must account for the social and political environment surrounding the problem. Thus, this course will aim to equip students with knowledge of the cultural and regulatory context for medical devices, and we expect this knowledge to be applied throughout the design process. Real designs are also created to solve complicated, messy problems; there is no one right answer, and there is no single clear question to answer. Thus, this course requires students to determine the parameters of the design problem through consultation with a clinical client, and the technical approach taken to solve it will be entirely up to the students.

Group written project reports (10% each, 2500-word limit):

March 27: Project background and concept selection
May 8: Risk analysis and design outline
June 4: Detailed design and prototyping results

Half of the report mark will be assigned on the basis of a detailed peer performance evaluation, examining both amount and quality of contribution. It is not expected that everyone contribute equally to each report in isolation, but each member of the group should contribute equally to the overall project; plans for uneven work over the semester should be agreed in advance to avoid negative outcomes in peer evaluation. Assignments of responsibility in peer evaluations that are not supported by evidence in reflection statements, project notebooks, and/or other sources may be investigated as academic misconduct.

In-class tests (15% each):

March 23
May 6

Group oral presentations (10% each):

Week of May 11: Design review meeting
May 27: Public final presentation

Reflection statements (10%) (2 paragraphs per week)

Project notebook (5%)

Peer assessment (5%)

No final exam.

Students are urged to discuss privately any impairment-related requirements face-to-face and/or in written form with the course convenor/lecturer and/or tutor.

Late reports will be penalized by 10% of the available marks per hour late; late reflection statements will not be accepted except by prior arrangement.

The University of Auckland will not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence. The work that a student submits for grading must be the student's own work, reflecting his or her learning. Where work from other sources is used, it must be properly acknowledged and referenced. This requirement also applies to sources on the world-wide web. A student's assessed work may be reviewed against electronic source material using computerised detection mechanisms. Upon reasonable request, students may be required to provide an electronic version of their work for computerised review.

All students enrolled at the University of Auckland are required to complete a compulsory Academic Integrity course, usually in their first semester/year of enrolment. The University of Auckland’s full guidelines on procedures and penalties for academic dishonesty are available here.

This year, peer review comments will be distributed prior to the calculation of grades, to avoid delays in feedback.