Technological advancements are taking the healthcare field to an advanced era, blurring the lines between traditional engineering and medical science. Owing to the advancements in the medical machines and the computers, the medical device industry is making medical practice easier for doctors, more effective for patients, and cheaper for the entire healthcare system. There is an extra care now being put on consumer-focused technology, which is a sweeping change.
In the life sciences realm, the CRISPR (or clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeat) technology has emerged with a breathtaking speed in a disruptive manner. Hailed as the “discovery of the century”, the creators of the technology were one of the strongest contenders for the Nobel Prize in 2015. The CSIPR gets its name from the genetic sequences that are part of an immune response to bacteria. Scientists have recently found ways to use the material to block or add in specific genes to an organism’s genetic code to achieve desired results. Although the high-precision task of slicing and dicing stands of DNA is very much an engineering challenge, it significantly reduces the time and cost of gene editing and is driving very rapid changes that will ultimately affect a wide range of engineers working in the biomedical realm. Often pitted against the equally impactful polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method that transformed genetic engineering 30 years ago, it provides the real possibility of adjusting the genome to achieve desired goals: elimination of genetic diseases, eradication of pathogens, and so forth.
