Board # 2 :Integrating Medical Economic Perspectives through Information Literacy in a Biomedical Clinical Immersion Design Course (Work in Progress)

Abstract

Abstract The landscape of today’s Biomedical Product Development Industry calls for a diverse set of skills beyond the typical engineering fundamentals. The current Hospital Value-Based Purchasing environment driven by the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) measure all new products by their ability to improve clinical outcomes, increase patient satisfaction, and lower the cost of care. Preparing students to become leaders in the Biomedical Engineering (BME) industry therefore must include an understanding of health economics and a broad view of the continuum of care and overall impact of care. The proposed changes to Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.’s (ABET) Criterion 3 signals the changing demands of the modern medical device product development environment. Under the proposed changes, accredited BME programs will be expected to develop diverse teams of engineers that are not only comfortable in the clinical environment, but also “recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations” and have the ability to identify “the ongoing need for additional knowledge and locate, evaluate, integrate, and apply this knowledge appropriately.” For many engineering disciplines, teaching students how to find and use journal articles, patents, and standards ensures that they will have a relatively complete understanding of the professional information environment. However, BME students entering the workforce increasingly need to be well versed in finding and utilizing additional sources of information, such as clinical data and medical bill coding. Recognizing this gap in the curriculum, in the spring of 2016 several instructors from [Institution Redacted]’s Department of Biomedical Engineering began partnering with the [Institution Redacted] Libraries to implement a substantially more rigorous information literacy training program. In this overhauled instructional design, students now receive training during their junior design course on finding: epidemiology data and disease state information; peer-reviewed articles from scholarly journals; patents; and business intelligence information on competitor medical device companies. During their senior design course, students receive training on finding: standards; legal information; FDA regulatory information; and reimbursement and medical billing information. This training is delivered via guest lectures from an engineering librarian, who in addition to explaining how and where to find these types of information also teaches students how to use information ethically. Students receiving this updated information literacy training are required in the documentation that accompanies their design projects to include relevant information from these different data sources, and to synthesize the information they find to justify the potential marketability of their product while considering CMS value-based criteria.

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