Discovering new cures, improving existing treatments and enhancing long-term health requires the newest technology. Working closely with physicians and bioscientists, engineers at UCSF create the sensors that will tell you that when you’re sick before you know it; find the electrical signals in the brain that enable speech; and figure out how to grow new organs from scratch.
Engineers are uniquely trained in three skills necessary for advancing healthcare in the 21st century:
Design (solving problems with novel combinations of ideas)
Systems Thinking (considering interactions among problems)
Building at Scale (Creating solutions that can be replicated for large populations)
Completing the Circle: Creating Interdisciplinary Teams to Address Tomorrows Challenges
The relationship between engineering and bioscience has traditionally been one-way: engineers create tools to meet the needs of bioscience and healthcare practitioners. Health Innovations Via Engineers works to accelerate interactions between engineering and bioscience by completing the circle of innovation: having Engineers solve the problems of Bioscience and by having Bioscience solve problems in Engineering. UCSF hosts one of the largest and most prominent group of bioscience experts in the US, a strong group of engineers and a growing collaboration with one of the most successful engineering programs at UC Berkeley, making UCSF a potentially dominant contributor to addressing the Technology Challenges of the 21st century.