Karen A. Beitler
Biotechnology and biomedical technology offer limitless potential in outstanding job opportunities for students with a pioneering spirirt and a gift for inovation. We have hardly noticed the influx of biotechnological inventions into our lives. Primetime television shows such as CSI, Forensic Files, Grey's Anatomy, ER, and House have brought the latest biotechnological advances in medical research right into our own living rooms. These shows often portray biomedical techniques, and biotechnical devices such as new imaging methods, prostethesis, and various types of drug delivery systems. Crimes are solved and lives are saved using imaging techniques, DNA fingerprinting, implants, transplant and prostheic limbs. New instrumentation and techniques are being developed everyday. This enormous exposure has brought biomedical techniques and biotechnology to the forefront of education.
Biomedical devices have demanding requirements; they can not be toxic or provoke immune response. They must be reliablle, small in size, light in weight and quiet. People are living longer and individuals are enjoying a better quality of life due to biomedical inventions that allow self-administration and freedom. Medicine and technology have worked together to improve drug administration, diagnotisic devices, and quality of life. This unit will explore a few of the new types of drug delivery and introduce students to new options of study in the fields of both medicine and science.
Designed to specifically enhance student understanding of how drugs are delivered to patients in a variety of situations, the focus will be on new biomedical technologies such as transdermal patches, drug delivering disks and non invasive procedures that seek to maximize efficacy of the drug at the target cellular level and minimize side effects to other parts of the organsim. In addition students will research biomedical engineering and technology from the standpoint of careers.
The unit assumes prior knowledge of basic systems of the body, specifically the integuementary system and the processes of osmosis and diffusion across membranes. The narrative reviews the anatomy, physiology and the important processes of diffusion and osmosis as related to our skin. The lesson plans introduce this knowledge to the students and include activities centered around drug delivery to specific diseased areas thereby introducing students to how biomedical technologists develop methods of drug delivery to control or cure disease states. The plans also include a Webquest in biotechnology and a research project on biomedical careers.
