Project based Learning and Biomedical Devices:
The UBORA Approach towards an International Community of
Developers Focused on Open Source Medical Devices
Andres Diaz Lantada
Mechanical Engineering Department, ETSI Industriales,
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, c/ José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain
Keywords: Project-based Learning, Biomedical Engineering (BME), Open Source Medical Devices (OSMD), Service
Learning, Collaborative Design, Co-creation, Collective Intelligence.
Abstract: The engineering design of successful medical devices relies on several key factors and constitutes an
extremely challenging process, which requires from multidisciplinary collaboration. In consequence,
preparing engineers in general and biomedical engineers in particular to work in the medical industry, in
connection with biodevice development, is complex. The teaching learning processes, through which the
trainees should acquire a broad overview of the medical field and biomedical industry, a well-balanced
combination of general and specific knowledge according to the chosen specialization, several technical
abilities linked to modern engineering tools and a wide set of professional skills, have to be strategically
planned and implemented. Among the existing teaching-learning methodologies that can be employed for
providing such holistic training, project-based learning is presented here and illustrated by means of
successful experiences. Trends in the field of collaboratively developed open source medical devices
(OSMDs) are presented and main current R&D challenges analyzed. To illustrate the OSMD field, the
“UBORA” project (meaning “excellence in Swahili) is highlighted as a paradigmatic example, in which
research and training aspects are importantly interwoven. In fact, this Euro-African initiative is focused on
the promotion of OSMDs by means of innovation through education, by the creation of a sort of
“Wikipedia” of medical devices, the “UBORA e-infrastructure”, which also guides designers in the
engineering design process and supports online collaboration through the process, and by the constitution of
an international community of developers devoted to OSMDs. Results from project-based learning activities
within the UBORA project, which include competitions, design schools and final degree theses, are
presented. The “UBORA e-infrastructure”, with more than 100 open source biodevices concepts and
prototypes already developed in collaboration by a global community of around 350 users, and shared
through such online platform, are also analyzed.
1 INTRODUCTION
The engineering design of successful medical
devices relies on several key factors, including:
orientation to patients’ needs, collaboration with
healthcare professionals throughout the whole
development process and the compromise of multi-
disciplinary research and development (R&D) teams
formed by well-trained professionals, especially
biomedical engineers, capable of understanding the
connections between science, technology and health
and guiding such developments. Preparing engineers
in general and biomedical engineers in particular to
work in the medical industry, in connection with
biodevice development, is a challenging process,
through which the trainee should acquire a broad
overview of the medical field and biomedical
industry, a well-balanced combination of general
and specific knowledge, according to the chosen
specialization, several technical abilities linked to
modern engineering tools and professional skills.
Among the varied existing teaching-learning
methodologies that can be employed for providing
such a holistic training, project-based learning
(PBL), especially in connection with the CDIO
“conceive-design-implement-operate” approach
applied to the biomedical field (Crawley, et al.,
2007, CDIO standards), is discussed here and
illustrated by means of successful experiences.
Diaz Lantada, A.
Project based Learning and Biomedical Devices: The UBORA Approach towards an International Community of Developers Focused on Open Source Medical Devices.
DOI: 10.5220/0008345600070013
In Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2019), pages 7-13
ISBN: 978-989-758-353-7
Copyright
c
2019 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
7
Besides, new approaches to the development of
innovative medical devices, including open source
and collaborative engineering design strategies,
which are bound to impact the medical industry in a
relevant way in the very near future and to support
the democratization of medical technology, need to
be considered for training the “biomedical engineers
of the future”. Trends in the field of collaboratively
developed open source medical devices (OSMDs)
are also presented along this document (De Maria, et
al., 2014 & 2015, Ahluwalia, et al., 2018).
To illustrate the OSMD field, the “UBORA”
project is put forward as a recent paradigmatic
example. This Euro-African initiative is focused on
the promotion of OSMDs by means of innovation
through education, by the creation of a “Wikipedia”
of medical devices, the “UBORA e-infrastructure”,
which also guides designers in the engineering
design process and supports online collaboration
through the process, and by the constitution of an
international community of developers devoted to
OSMDs. The varied project-based learning activities
performed within the first couple of years of
UBORA project’s endeavors are presented and some
results illustrated. Besides, the “UBORA e-
infrastructure” and the more than 100 open source
biodevices concepts and prototypes developed in
collaboration by a global community of around 350
users, and shared through such online infrastructure,
are also analyzed, focusing on advances since its
official presentation (Ahluwalia, et al., 2018a,
2018b, 2018c). Finally, some potentials and
challenges in the OSMD field are discussed.
2 PROJECT-BASED LEARNING
AND BIOMEDICAL DEVICES
Biomedical engineering (BME) has been since its
origins a truly transformative field of engineering,
which may even lead to equitable access to
healthcare technologies and universal health
coverage in the near future, according to World
Health Organization’s objectives (United Nations
General Assembly, 2012). However, this field and
related transformations rely on the collaboration of
engineers from all fields, whose training should
make them successful developers of effective,
efficient, safe, replicable, cost competitive, ethically
responsible, sustainable and regulation compliant
medical devices. Project-based learning, connected
to the development of real medical devices, is
arguably the best strategy for training engineers,
from a wide set of environments, towards successful
professional practice in the medical industry.
Some guidelines, proposals and ideas for the
straightforward successful design, implementation
and operation of PBL experiences in the biomedical
engineering field and focused on the design,
manufacturing and testing of biodevices, based on
author’s experience and recommendations from key
references (King, 1999, King, et al., 2003, 2006,
Krishnan, et al., 2011, Morss Clyne, et al., 2016), are
provided in the following subsections.
2.1 Planning the Learning Objectives
When planning project-based teaching-learning
experiences, it is interesting to start by analyzing the
purpose and by listing down the learning objectives
envisioned for the concrete course or programme of
studies. Asking ourselves how our students may be
involved in the medical industry in their future
career paths and what we would like them to master,
as regards the development life cycle of innovative
medical devices seems a good start option. A set of
high-level learning objectives for any bioengineering
design course focused on training students through
the complete development process of medical
technologies may include the following:
O.1. Ability to conceive, design, produce and
operate innovative medical devices by applying
systematic engineering-design methodologies for
improved results when addressing global health
concerns.
O.2. Ability to promote research and innovation
strategies in biomedical engineering and in the
medical device industry, so as to better take into
consideration the voice of patients, associations and
healthcare professionals.
O.3. Understanding the fundamental relevance of
standardization and the need for considering existing
regulatory paths, so as to achieve safe and compliant
prototypes of medical devices ready for production.
O.4. Capability to create value proposals linked to
innovative medical devices or technologies and to
generate viable entrepreneurial activities within the
biomedical industry.
O.5. Capability to learn for researching and
developing innovative technologies and to mentor
their application to innovative medical devices with
improved performance, usability and societal
impact, as compared with current gold standards.
Once the learning objectives are defined, the
context and boundaries need to be established, in
accordance with the temporal framework and
available resources for our course and considering
the overall objectives and desired outcomes of the
complete engineering programme.
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2.2 Establishing the Context: PBL and
Service Learning
Student and professor motivation are the keys of
success in engineering education and establishing a
motivating context of shared dreams is essential,
towards truly successful and career inspiring PBL
experiences, especially in such a transformative field
as BME: Our students should always understand that
engineering must aim at improving the world and
our global society. Medical technologies are part of
this process of change, in connection with the UN
Global Goal number 3 on “Good health and well-
being”, but also linked to numbers 8 on “Decent
work and economic growth” and 9 on Industry,
innovation and infrastructure” among others.
In consequence, PBL experiences in the BME
field, if possible, should be contextualized in
connection with relevant health concerns and try to
respond to the needs of patients and healthcare
professionals. Ideally, when external advisors from
hospitals, associations, companies or NGOs working
in low-resource settings are involved, the context
and ideas for the projects, to be developed by
student groups within the PBL experience, can be
linked to real specific needs or concrete challenges,
hence transforming the PBL experience into a
service learning challenge, in which ethical issues
can be additionally developed in class.
Evidently the context is marked also by the
background of our students and by the global
objectives and outcomes of the whole programme: A
medical device engineering design course within a
robotics engineering programme may concentrate on
medical robotics projects (i.e. design of surgical
manipulators or artificial hands); while student
projects in a mechanical engineering programme
may focus on the design and manufacturing of
implants (i.e. prostheses for articular repair or
artificial valves). At the same time, biomedical PBL
experiences in materials science programmes may
even connect with the field of biofabrication,
through the design of scaffolding materials and other
artificial constructs (at least conceptually); while
PBL tasks in industrial organization engineering
may tackle supply chain problems or focus on
quality and risk management, in connection with
real production processes, to cite some examples.
Student background should be also considered,
perhaps leaving more conceptual projects to the first
engineering courses and those requiring more
technical design, manufacturing and experimental
skills to the final year of the Bachelor’s degrees or to
the Master’s and even PhD levels.
2.3 Defining Contents and Boundaries
With the previously listed high-level learning
objectives in mind (Sect. 2.1 O.1-O.5), for any
bioengineering design course focused on training
students through the complete development process
of medical technologies or biodevices, the following
basic contents are proposed. They can serve as
topics for lessons or modules depending on the
available time and temporal framework of the
concrete course. They can act as structuring
elements for PBL experiences, which can range
from just one week to even a whole academic year,
as previous examples have shown (Ahluwalia, et al.
2018b). The proposed basic contents include:
-Engineering design methodologies for biodevices.
-Conceptual design and creativity promotion tools.
-Design for usability and risk mitigation.
-Design considering standards and regulations.
-Prototyping and testing of biodevices.
-Mass-personalization and mass-production options.
-Commercialization paths and supply chain issues.
-Sustainable development of biodevices.
-Ethical issues in the biomedical industry.
These basic contents can be completed with
specific modules for adapting a generic or sort of
“universal” bioengineering design course to the
specific needs of completely varied engineering
programmes. For instance, a module on “biosignals”
may adapt and reinforce these contents for a
electronic engineering programme, while a module
on “biomechanics and biomaterials” may be
adequate for completing a course for a materials
science or mechanical engineering programme. In
some cases, specific training for transversal skills
may be provided, including seminars on teamwork
abilities, project and time management skills, and
communication techniques, among others.
Regarding the scope and boundaries of the PBL
experience, depending also on the available time and
resources, the projects may focus just on the
specification and conceptual stages, or reach up to
the design, prototyping and testing phases.
2.4 Implementing and Assessing
A good definition of objectives, context and contents
typically leads to straightforwardly implementable
PBL experiences, although some unforeseen events
may always take place. Counting with well-
maintained manufacturing resources, with rapid
responding suppliers and with software licenses,
renewed with enough time before the start of the
courses, are among the good practices we can cite.
Project based Learning and Biomedical Devices: The UBORA Approach towards an International Community of Developers Focused on
Open Source Medical Devices
9
Promotion of communication between professors
and students, with monthly face-to-face meetings
and tutorials and with intermediate presentation of
results and through a consistent plan of distributed
deliverables, is also advisable.
Regarding evaluation, involving students in their
own assessment, especially through peer-review
activities within the working groups, may be
considered as an additional control tool for
successful PBL. However the promotion of positive
interdependence, by making students work in
complex enough projects, and some degree of
individual assessment, i.e. through specific questions
in oral presentations or by means of additional
deliverables or evaluation tasks, are the more basic
options for achieving a good ambience of
collaboration within the teams, without losing
individual control upon students that may fade away
in teamwork activities (Díaz Lantada, et al, 2013).
3 THE UBORA OPEN SOURCE
COLLABORATIVE MODEL
The UBORA research, development and training
model for transforming the biomedical industry
towards equitable healthcare technologies derives
from experiences conceived, designed, performed
and validated within the H2020 “UBORA: Euro-
African Open Biomedical Engineering e-Platform
for Innovation through Education” project (GA-
731053) during years 2017 and 2018, which have
counted with the fundamental support of the
UBORA e-infrastructure, an open-access design
environment envisioned for the co-creation of open-
source medical technologies according to real needs,
as detailed below.
3.1 Open Source Medical Devices
UBORA focuses on the promotion of research and
training activities in BME pursuing the collaborative
development of open-source medical devices
(OSMDs). These devices are developed by sharing
concepts, design files, documentation, source-code,
blueprints and prototypes, testing results and all
collected data, with other professional medical
device designers. These interactions should benefit
the whole life cycle of the devices or products under
development and ideally lead to safer performance,
thanks to increased peer-review through the co-
creation process (De Maria et al., 2015, Ravizza, et
al., 2017, Ahluwalia, et al., 2018a).
3.2 UBORA: Much More than a
“Wikipedia” of Biodevices
The UBORA e-infrastructure, implemented for
supporting the nascent OSMD community in
research, co-creation/-design and teaching-learning
tasks (see: https://ubora-kahawa.azurewebsites.net/)
includes features such as: a) a section for specifying
medical needs, through which patients and
healthcare professionals can ask for technological
solutions; b) a section for sharing technological
solutions, through which engineers can showcase
their proposals for the future of medical care; c) a
meta-structure for supporting biomedical engineers,
engineering students and professors in the field to
guide the development of innovative medical
technologies, in a step-by-step process following
systematic engineering-design processes, answering
and filling in the questions and sections provided by
the e-infrastructure; d) a community with already
more than 350 co-creators; and e) a section for
sharing open teaching materials.
3.3 Arranging and Training a Global
Community Focused on OSMDs
When planning to arrange and train a global
community of designers and developers of OSMDs,
in which international collaboration should play a
central role for the near future, it became clear for
the UBORA consortium that PBL should be used as
overall teaching-learning strategy. Consequently,
different types and formats of PBL experiences have
been conceived and carried out in the last two years,
which have involved around 30 mentors and well-
beyond 300 students (now engineers), leading to a
collaborative community of more than 350 members
from some 30 countries distributed through Africa,
America, Asia and Europe and interacting through
the UBORA e-infrastructure.
UBORA PBL experiences include: thematic
medical device design competitions, one-week
medical device design schools and final degree
theses linked to biodevice development. In 2017 the
UBORA Design Competition (online, February-
June) and Design School (Nairobi, December)
focused on child and maternal health, while in 2018
the UBORA Design Competition (online, January-
May) and Design School (Pisa, September) focused
on ageing-related issues. More than 100 participants
have taken part in each of the competitions, while 40
students have participated in each design school,
which follow an express PBL approach, from
concept to prototype in 5 days”.
BIOSTEC 2019 - 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies
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These PBL activities are now performed on an
annual basis and additional ones (mainly UBORA
competitions and UBORA design schools) can be ad
hoc conceived and implemented for focusing on
more specific topics, health issues, contexts or
locations, for colleagues and institutions interested
in exploring open source approaches to the
development of medical technology. Besides, the
UBORA e-infrastructure is already supporting the
development of different medical technology design
courses, within different engineering programmes at
the universities involved in the UBORA project
consortium. Its use as teaching-learning environment
for fostering PBL methodologies in bioengineering
programmes is open to all colleagues interested in
learning-by-doing with their students.
3.4 Some Cases of Success
When exploring the OSMDs developed within the
UBORA e-infrastructure it is possible to find
technological concepts and prototype solutions for
most medical technology missions, including:
prevention, diagnosis, surgery, therapy and
monitoring. Besides, most medical areas are already
being covered, from pediatrics to geriatrics, from
internal medicine, through general surgery, to
traumatology and orthopedics.
Here, by means of example, we present some
selected cases of study mentored by the author and
developed together with his students during their
final degree projects and during their participation in
different courses, in which PBL is used as driving
methodology for teaching medical technology
development and promoting BME in Spain.
Figure 1 illustrates the personalized design and
the 3D printed prototype of a shoulder splint for
injured joint immobilization. Computer-aided design
is performed, after optical scanning of the healthy
volunteer, by using surface based design operation
with Siemens NX-11 design software and final
meshing with Autodesk Meshmixer. 3D printing for
ergonomic validation is accomplished using a BCN-
Sigma 3D printer and white poly(lactic acid) (PLA)
filament. Figure 2 schematically presents the
development of a portable cooler for vaccines based
on the use of Peltier cells. The circuit design, based
on the use of open source electronics (Arduino
control board) and the preliminary 3D printed
prototype, with the Peltier cell and refrigerator
mounted upon the cooler top and isolating panels
placed inside the printed cage, are shown. Additional
information on these devices is shared through the
UBORA e-infrastructure.
Figure 1: Personalized design and 3D printed prototype of
a shoulder splint for injured joint immobilization.
Designer: Eduardo Martínez. Collaborator: Marina
Maestro. Mentor: Andrés Díaz Lantada.
Figure 2: Circuit design and preliminary prototype of a
portable cooler for vaccines using Peltier cells. Designers:
Isabel Álvarez and Elena Crespo. Mentor: Andrés Díaz
Lantada.
Project based Learning and Biomedical Devices: The UBORA Approach towards an International Community of Developers Focused on
Open Source Medical Devices
11
4 FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
4.1 Main Potentials
Open source medical devices are here to stay as a
changing force, towards a more equitable medical
industry and accessible medical technologies. Their
benefits for the democratization of these solutions,
aiming at global health coverage in the near future,
can be understood, if we consider examples from
other industries (i.e. electronics and software)
already transformed through open source software
and hardware.
The co-creation processes, in which these
OSMDs rely, also turn out to be very positive for
patients and healthcare professionals, due to the
promotion of bottom-up innovation. All these
beneficial aspects of open source biodevices can be
multiplied by means of adequate training strategies,
aimed at the creation of a cohort of designers and
developers, capable of mentoring this emergent area
of open source medical technologies and focused on
international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary
collaboration throughout the whole innovation
chain.
4.2 Key Challenges
Among the more relevant challenges to tackle in this
novel open source medical technology co-creation
paradigm, it is important to highlight: i) the need for
solutions to guarantee the traceability of materials,
design files and manufactured components in open
design and production lines; ii) the need for
resources to systematically and safely track design
changes in collaborative design environments and e-
infrastructures; iii) the need for changes in existing
regulations and for new standards adequately
considering and guiding developers, within these
collaborative and open design and manufacturing
approaches to biodevice innovation.
Capacity building in low-resource settings, by
creating a workforce of biomedical engineering and
BME professors, in places where access to medical
technology is more urgent and where the co-creation
with healthcare professionals and patients can be of
special relevance, is another fundamental issue.
We expect that all these issues will be solved in
the near future through collaboration using co-
creation environments, such as the UBORA e-
infrastructure, which is open to all medical
technology designers and users, as well as educators,
for constructive interactions.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Innovation through education (one of the mottos of
the UBORA project and community) is an excellent,
sustainable and responsible strategy for transforming
any industry and for walking towards the fulfilment
of the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable
Development. Within BME, training engineers for
working in international teams and for collaborating
in the development of open source medical
technologies can constitute a very relevant driver of
change in years to come.
The highlighted UBORA e-infrastructure, a
recently created collaborative environment for the
co-creation of medical devices, and related UBORA
teaching-learning experiences provide pioneering
examples of collaborative research and education in
BME, as a way for establishing the foundations of
the OSMD field.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This document summarizes the Biodevices 2019
keynote speech presented by Prof. Andrés Díaz
Lantada, who acknowledges the consideration of the
Conference Chairs for their kind invitation.
Besides, author acknowledges the UBORA
Euro-African Open Biomedical Engineering e-
Platform for Innovation through Educationproject,
funded by the European Union’s “Horizon 2020”
research and innovation programme, under grant
agreement No 731053, and all colleagues from the
UBORA consortium, inspiringly led by Prof. Arti
Ahluwalia from the University of Pisa.
BIOSTEC 2019 - 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies
12
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BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Andrés Díaz Lantada is Associate
Professor in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering at the
Industrial Engineering School of
Universidad Politécnica de
Madrid (UPM). He finished his
6-year Industrial Engineering
Degree in 2005 and his PhD
Thesis in Mechanical Engineering and
Manufacturing in 2009, which received the
Extraordinary PhD Award by UPM and the 2nd PhD
Award by the Council of Industrial Engineers of
Madrid. His research interests are linked to the
development of mechanical systems and biomedical
devices with improved capabilities, thanks to the
incorporation of smart materials, special geometries
and complex functional surfaces and structures,
mainly attainable by means of high-precision
additive manufacturing processes.
He is currently UPM Contact Researcher at the
“EU Virtual Institute of Knowledge-Based Multi-
functional Materials”, UPM Leader at the “UBORA:
Euro-African Open Biomedical Engineering e-
Platform for Innovation through Education” project,
funded by the EU H2020 programme within the
“Support to policy and international cooperation”
call, and Director of the UPM Product Development
Laboratory. He has also led the research activities of
UPM within the “TOMAX: Tool-less manufacturing
of complex structures” project, funded by the EU
H2020 programme within the “Factories of the
future” call.
Andrés has directed 2PhD Theses and more than
100MSc and BSc final degree theses. He has
received the “UPM Teaching Innovation Award” in
2014, the “UPM Young Researcher Award” in 2014,
and the “Medal to Researchers under 40” by the
“Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering” in 2015.
Since January 2016 he has the honour of being
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the
International Journal of Engineering Education. His
current research dedication is to the field of open
source medical devices for the democratization of
medical technology, in connection with the UBORA
community and with the UBORA e-infrastructure,
and to the development of innovative teaching-
learning methodologies in the BME field.
Project based Learning and Biomedical Devices: The UBORA Approach towards an International Community of Developers Focused on
Open Source Medical Devices
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