Abstract
A new frontier of manufacturing research, biomedical manufacturing, is presented. Advanced manufacturing technologies, such as manufacturing processes, systems, and quality control, can be readily applied to improve the safety, quality, cost, and speed of medical and healthcare service and research. The analogy of hospital as factory is explored to define biomedical manufacturing. Characteristics and engineering needs of biomedical manufacturing are discussed. Examples in interventional cardiology on the grinding and cutting of plaque and the tissue machining on minimizing the nerve tissue thermal damage in surgery are used to demonstrate the broad spectrum of biomedical manufacturing research. On education, the scope and lessons learned from teaching a new senior undergraduate/first-year graduate level course in Biomedical Design and Manufacturing are presented. Copyright © 2006 by ASME.