Striking a Balance With Business and Engineering Content in Biomedical Engineering Capstone Design

Capstone design focused on medical/assistive devices provides a golden opportunity to educate young biomedical engineers in business and entrepreneurship. What constitutes a healthy balance of engineering and business subject matter, however, remains unclear. The present paper describes the history of the senior capstone design course sequence in Biomedical Engineering (BME) at the author's institution, for which he was lead instructor. The focus is on the business content, which was first increased to encourage an entrepreneurial mind-set among students, then later decreased, based on student feedback, instructor assessment, and related grant proposal reviews, which all suggested that engineering aspects of the design process were being compromised. Business and engineering topics included in the current course sequence are described to help course designers strike a balance that provides students with the skills to be successful as design engineers with healthy business acumen.