Addressing Clinical Challenges Through Innovation
Delivering high-quality, equitable, and cost-efficient healthcare are major challenges. The obesity epidemic, an aging population, and rising costs continually test the modern healthcare system. As an answer to these mounting demands, innovative technologies seek to alleviate clinical problems and advance patient care. For example, healthcare informatics and machine learning have harnessed routinely captured patient data to optimize care delivery and improve treatment outcomes (Sharma et al. 2018). Robotic surgery has been increasingly utilized for minimally invasive surgeries to reduce morbidity compared to open procedures (George et al. 2018).
Medical innovations that redefine clinical practice often benefit from insight on human factors and patient-centered design (Thimbleby 2013). Physicians are first-hand observers of the obstacles faced in healthcare and well-positioned to be the catalysts for “disruptive technologies”. However, most physicians do not receive the necessary training and skills to develop and market such technologies that could remedy clinical problems (Niccum et al. 2017). Unlike basic science coursework and clinical skills, technical design concepts and innovation strategies are not commonly taught within the medical school curriculum, a formative time for physician development (Niccum et al. 2017). While medical students recognize the need for formal training in innovation, leadership, and transdisciplinary collaboration, less than 10% of medical education programs in the United States directly address these core values (Niccum et al. 2017; Brazile et al. 2018; Sendak et al. 2021). Nevertheless, the National Academies of Medicine, American Medical Association, and Association of Medical Colleges have all stipulated that technological innovation should be a key component of medical education, especially in the context of machine learning (Wartman and Combs 2018; Matheny et al. 2020; Sendak et al. 2021).
Fortunately, select medical schools have initiated programs specifically aimed at enhancing medical innovation and transdisciplinary collaboration (Niccum et al. 2017; Coiado and Ahmad 2020; Sendak et al. 2021). Herein we discuss the University of Minnesota’s 10-year experience with the Scott and Sue Augustine Biomedical Engineering Fellowship (referred to as the “Augustine” program), a joint engineering and medical training program designed to educate and guide aspiring physician-innovators to become effective leaders in developing cutting-edge biomedical technologies. In this review, we detail the novel program design, perspectives from practicing physician graduates, and considerations for medical schools that may implement an engineering and innovation curriculum.