Overview of biomedical engineering education programs in Europe: The results of the CRH-BME project survey

Abstract

Biomedical Engineering (BME) is considered today as one of the most promising job of the future. Education in BME in Europe during the last decade has been mainly influenced by: The European policy on higher education, research & development (R&D) programs in the field and the market demands. Due to the rapid technological progress in the field there is a strong pressure on education, training and life long learning programs to continuously adapt their objectives in order to face new requirements and challenges. The main objective of the TEMPUS IV, CRH-BME project is to contribute to the update of existing curricula in the field of BME in order to meet recent and future developments, address new emerging interdisciplinary domains that appear as a result of the R&D progress and respond to the BME job market demands. The first step towards this goal was to extensively review the existing curricula in BME education in Europe. The work was carried out through collection of information by the means of questionnaires. The present study covered 46 countries in Europe and identified 40 countries with Biomedical Engineering programs. By the and of 2010, 148 Universities across Europe were offering a total of 299 BME programs, distributed as following: 82 Undergraduate programs offering BSc degree, and 217 Postgraduate programs, from which 157 offer MSc degree and 60 offer PhD degree. The results of this study reveal that Biomedical Engineering programs are experiencing rapid growth after the year 2000 and especially during the last five years. This leads to an increased number of Biomedical Engineers available today on the market and it is expected to play an important role in meeting the existing and forecasted needs in the BME field in Europe. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.