Work in Progress: Learning from Two Little Blue Lines: Introducing Biomedical Engineering by Reverse Engineering a Low-Cost Diagnostic Device

摘要

In-class demonstrations and outreach activities that introduce students and/or educators to Biomedical Engineering can be challenging to develop, expensive to implement, and inflexible in complexity. Several low-cost modules that introduce biomedical engineering concepts to K-12 students have been described previously (e.g. Lambeth et al., 2015; Madihally and Maase, 2006; Sherwood and Klein, 2003). Here, we have developed a flexible module that utilizes the reverse engineering of over-the-counter, low-cost diagnostic devices - early pregnancy tests - to introduce various aspects of Biomedical Engineering. Early pregnancy tests have been suggested for collegiate-level in-class activities previously (Evenson 2013), and considerable research has been dedicated to the development of paper-based analytical devices for diagnostics and molecule detection (e.g. Martinez et al., 2010; Scala-Benuzzi et al., 2018), but we are unaware of any previously published modules that couple these for the introduction of biomedical engineering.