Clinical Engineering

Clinical engineering is a specialty within Biomedical engineering responsible primarily for applying and implementing medical technology to optimize healthcare delivery. Roles of clinical engineers include training and supervising biomedical equipment technicians (BMETs), working with governmental regulators on hospital inspections/audits, and serving as technological consultants for other hospital staff (i.e. physicians, administrators, I.T., etc.). Clinical engineers also advise medical device producers regarding prospective design improvements based on clinical experiences, as well as monitor the progression of the state-of-the-art in order to redirect hospital procurement patterns accordingly.

Their inherent focus on practical implementation of technology has tended to keep them oriented more towards incremental-level redesigns and reconfigurations, as opposed to "revolutionary" R&D or cutting-edge ideas that would be many years from clinical adoptability; however, there is nonetheless an effort to expand this time-horizon over which clinical engineers can influence the trajectory of biomedical innovation. In their various roles, they form a sort of "bridge" between product originators and end-users, by combining the perspectives of being both close to the point-of-use ("front lines"), while also trained in product and process design. Clinical Engineering departments at large hospitals will sometimes hire not just biomedical engineers, but also industrial/systems engineers to help address operations research, human factors, cost analyses, safety, etc.