As healthcare changes rapidly and becomes increasingly complex under technological, economic, social, and regulatory impacts, it is anticipated that healthcare engineering will play a role of growing importance in almost every aspect of healthcare and will also be a major factor that advances healthcare.
Dr. Chyu is the founding president of the Healthcare Engineering Alliance Society (HEALS), a global organization founded in 2016 with the goal of bridging the gap between engineering and healthcare, educating engineering students and engineers for careers in the field, and assisting healthcare professionals in using engineering to address healthcare issues.
All service platforms in HEALS were initiated by and established under the leadership of Dr. Chyu. Dr. Chyu has spent years assisting doctors and other healthcare professionals whose inventions, based on their clinical experience and knowledge, have advanced to the point where they require assistance from engineers, researchers, consultants, or businesses to elevate to a level more conducive to FDA approval, manufacturing, and commercialization. Dr. Chyu, on the other hand, has assisted engineers, engineering professors, researchers, and businesses in connecting with clinicians to ensure that their inventions and products can truly improve patient outcomes. He created a platform (COCACO, Connect, Catalyze, Collaborate) that enables engineers, researchers, inventors, consultants, investors, entrepreneurs, and businesses to work together on projects that result in the commercialization of new medical devices and technologies based on his experience in this field.
The platform’s main purpose is to gather a variety of technical projects that deal with unmet patient care needs. These projects are typically coming from clinicians, engineers, and medical device/technology companies looking for collaborations on the following: conceptualization, research, design, prototyping, testing, clinical trial, regulation compliance, FDA clearance/approval, manufacture, capital funding, etc. This platform also provides excellent opportunities for engineering students to learn by working with clinicians, engineers, and companies on real-world healthcare projects.
Innovation that Inspires
Dr. Chyu has created a thorough, user-friendly medical device platform (Medical Device Net) that offers systematic state-of-the-technology information for all medical devices (currently over 220,000 from 34,000 manufacturers at present), including the most recent ones cleared or approved by the FDA. This platform is a powerful tool for the invention and development of new medical devices for student projects as well as for healthcare engineering professionals.
It can be difficult for engineering researchers and students conducting healthcare research to find the best place to publish their findings. Because there is too much healthcare content in their papers and it is difficult to find qualified engineering reviewers to review their manuscripts, engineering journals may reject their submissions. On the other hand, medical and biomedical journals might also reject them if there is too much engineering content and unavailability of qualified reviewers. The same problem faces healthcare and biomedical researchers trying to publish their results in engineering journals. To deal with such an issue, Dr. Chyu has founded and served as the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Healthcare Engineering. It is one of the first journals to publish scientific articles on the intersection of healthcare and engineering. It also encourages collaborative research in this field, focusing on the direct impact on patient outcomes. He has also introduced the Healthcare Engineering Online Communities, bringing healthcare and engineering communities together and providing updated information about more than 500 topics, from artificial intelligence to 3D printing for surgery, engineering for cancer diagnosis, and nanomedicine.
Expert in the Field
Professor Ming-Chien Chyu holds positions as a professor at Texas Tech University’s Mechanical Engineering Department and an adjunct professor at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center’s School of Medicine. The National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, US Department of Agriculture, national laboratories, professional societies, state governments, private foundations, and industry have all funded his research. He took part in the design of the International Space Station at the NASA Johnson Space Center, superconductor research at Argonne National Laboratory, and nuclear energy research at Sandia National Laboratories (as a consultant). He has served on a number of technical committees in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), including as Chair of the Superconductivity Technical Committee in the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME. He has published 200 technical publications, including 140 archival journal papers in engineering and healthcare. His recent research activities cover a wide spectrum of specialties, from epilepsy to cancer detection to surgery, from bone to joint to muscle biomechanics, from biophysical stimulations to dietary supplements for intervention, from mathematical analysis to model simulation to experiment, from laboratory to animal to human studies, and more.
Dr. Chyu has devoted his career to advancing healthcare and engineering cooperation. He has received recognition from 13 US-based international magazines as a (or the) Pioneer in Healthcare Engineering or the Father of Healthcare Engineering. He led 40 expert co-authors worldwide to first define healthcare engineering in a milestone white paper (2015) and also on Wikipedia.org. He is the founder and Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Healthcare Engineering. He is also the founder of Medical Device Net, one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly free medical device platforms for all medical devices approved or cleared by the FDA; a platform for physicians to collaborate with engineering researchers and companies to develop and commercialize medical devices; a platform to help professors worldwide teach courses in healthcare engineering; Cutting-Edge Courses Customized (CECOCU), an innovative platform for short courses in healthcare engineering; the Healthcare Engineering Certificate Program; ENJOHE, the only website dedicated to engineering jobs in healthcare; a Healthcare Engineering Mentoring Program where healthcare engineering professionals and leaders volunteer to help engineering students and young engineers succeed in the industry; and Healthcare Engineering Online Communities, one of the most comprehensive and updated information powerhouses in healthcare engineering; the graduate healthcare engineering program at Texas Tech University, one of the first such programs established in the world.
Dr. Chyu is a Fellow of ASME, a Fellow of American College of Healthcare Trustees, and has received numerous awards/recognitions including the “World’s 10 Most Influential Engineering & Technology Leaders in 2023”, “Most Influential Leader in Engineering & Technology USA” , “Top 100 Innovators & Entrepreneurs”, “Transformational Business Leaders of the Year”, “Best Inspiring Leaders of the Year 2022”, “World’s Visionary Leaders Making a Difference – 2022”, “Top 10 Eminent Leaders in the US Healthcare Industry 2023”, “10 Most Innovative Healthcare Leaders to Watch 2022”, “Most Influential Leaders in Healthcare 2022”, “Most Visionary Education Leaders”, “30 Most Inspiring Leaders to Watch 2022”, “Innovation Excellence Award”, “Outstanding Researcher”, “Award of Excellence”, “Best Paper”, “Most Useful Paper”, “Excellence in Teaching”, “Professor of the Year”, “Most Influential Faculty Member”, and “Distinguished Achievement” from global professional magazines, government, professional societies, foundations, industry, university, and student organization. The Healthcare Engineering Alliance Society he established has been recognized as one of the “Most Influential Companies & Organizations”. It is unusual for Dr. Chyu as an engineering professor to win those prestigious awards in Healthcare from three global professional magazines. He constantly serves as an editorial team member of a number of professional journals, and co-organizer and keynote speaker of international conferences. Dr. Chyu is a licensed professional engineer in the State of Texas.
“Dr. Chyu has been a pioneer in healthcare engineering and was one of the early advocates for applying engineering practices to efforts to enhance healthcare delivery.” -James P. Bagian, MD, PE, US National Academy of Medicine, US National Academy of Engineering, former NASA Astronaut
“Dr. Chyu may have already secured a historical position in the development of healthcare engineering.” -Fazle Hussain, Ph.D., US National Academy of Engineering, The World Academy of Science.
Bridging the Gap
Dr. Chyu created a platform with the goal of assisting engineering students and young engineering professionals in the healthcare sector to succeed, as well as assisting the sector to find qualified engineers. In terms of both quantity and quality, the healthcare sector needs more qualified engineers from a variety of engineering disciplines. With the exception of biomedical engineering, the majority of current engineering curricula (especially undergraduate curricula) cover very little to no healthcare or biomedicine. Nevertheless, the healthcare industry needs to employ a lot more engineers from nonbiomedical engineering fields, particularly chemical, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineers. However, the majority of engineering students are unaware of the abundant career options available in the healthcare sector.
To bridge such a gap, Dr. Chyu started a program that invites medical doctors with expertise in healthcare engineering and medical technology innovation, particularly those few MDs with engineering degrees, to deliver lectures to engineering students. The topics of focus are healthcare issues and problems that need engineering solutions to improve patient outcomes directly. Engineering leaders from the healthcare industry, particularly the medical device and technology sectors, as well as medical school professors with degrees in engineering, are also invited as guest speakers. These experts with dual expertise are the most qualified and effective in teaching engineering students about healthcare.
In helping prepare engineering students for jobs in healthcare, Dr. Chyu developed a healthcare engineering certificate program featuring the innovative “Cutting-Edge Courses Customized” (CECOCU), which allows individuals to self-define the course topic, objectives, and scope of their learning, based on their backgrounds, interests, career strategies, and job market opportunities. This certificate program was also created to assist practicing engineers in making the transition from other industrial sectors to healthcare, as well as to teach healthcare professionals (such as doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and allied health professionals) how to use engineering in their daily work to solve problems and advance patient care. In assisting university professors and administrators in enhancing their curricula, Dr. Chyu collaborates with industry leaders and healthcare engineering professionals to develop strategies for better preparing engineering students for healthcare careers.
Committed to Bringing Change
Many healthcare and engineering professionals may feel strongly about the need to close the gap between the two fields, but very few are able to commit to taking action and making changes. At the nexus of healthcare and engineering, Dr. Chyu has taken the initiative to approach hundreds of specialists privately in order to develop and implement solutions. From “not sure about what I am doing” to an exciting connection with more and more people who share the same passion and being able to serve people with different needs, he claims it was a challenging transition. It is a well-known fact that engineering in general has contributed significantly to improving healthcare by bringing about ground-breaking developments in the field. Many healthcare problems benefit from engineering solutions, while many advancements in healthcare stem from breakthroughs in engineering/technology.
However, when Dr. Chyu started his journey in the initial years, it was challenging to define what healthcare engineering is for healthcare and engineering professionals, students, colleagues, and university administrators. After talking to hundreds of people, he and 40 expert co-authors, with the inputs from more than 280 reviewers worldwide, first defined healthcare engineering in a milestone white paper and on the current Wikipedia profile. Their definition and contributions continue to serve as the cornerstone for developing this unique and ground-breaking sector. A challenge in helping medical doctors collaborate with university professors, researchers, and students is to reach an agreement in terms of sharing intellectual property rights between medical doctors and universities.
Encouraging Emerging Leaders
The healthcare industry is currently one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing industries. With this fast-paced growth, the demand for healthcare engineering professionals is only going to increase. Dr. Chyu predicts, “As healthcare changes rapidly and becomes increasingly complex under technological, economic, social, and regulatory impacts, it is anticipated that healthcare engineering will play a role of growing importance in almost every aspect of healthcare and will also be a major factor that advances healthcare.” Dr. Chyu mentions that engineering students need to be encouraged to consider jobs in healthcare as it offers remarkable growth opportunities, interdisciplinary challenges, and favorable long-term career prospects and stability. Moreover, it enables these young minds to directly contribute to the welfare of human life and health as engineers. He gives advice to aspiring engineers in this space by saying, “Irrespective of specialties, engineers need to work with and learn from healthcare professionals, particularly clinicians, about how to design and manufacture things that can really help clinicians in patient care.” “Proactively seeking close collaboration with the other side is the key.” As technology continues to create new areas for engineers to work in healthcare and the fusion of engineering with health sciences leads to a greater demand for engineers, healthcare engineering will be recognized as one of the most important professions where engineers make major contributions that directly benefit human health.
Foresight to Advance Healthcare and Engineering
In his passion to bridge the gap between healthcare and engineering, Dr. Chy is leading HEALS to develop cooperative relationship with different engineering professional organizations, healthcare/medical professional organizations, the healthcare industry, and government for the purpose of promoting and facilitating mutually beneficial exchanges of technical, scientific and professional knowledge, closer professional links among the organizations, and professional enhancement and lifelong learning opportunities for all members involved. He is committed to forging such a strong alliance.
The legacy of Dr. Ming-Chien Chyu is one of innovative thinking, leadership, and steadfast commitment to advancing healthcare via engineering. His impact is unrestricted, and his work will continue to affect healthcare engineering for many years to come.
Written by Steve Sanchez.
