TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | a p r i l 2 0 1 9 28 New Frontiers for Physicianeers Physician-engineers are poised to transform health care B y S h a n l e y P i e r c e M edical students traditionally spend four grueling years memorizing by rote thousands of features of the human anatomy, seemingly endless biochemical pathways and scores of pathologies. They're trained to diagnose medical diseases and prescribe courses of treatment using existing technology and therapeutics. Very rarely do they engineer new devices or tech- nologies to treat their patients. Medicine and engineering have long been taught in separate silos, but the rapid growth of wearable technologies, biomedical devices and digital health—born from the convergence of these two fields— necessitates integrated training. "Engineers are trained to be problem solvers, and medicine is full of problems," said Roderic I. Pettigrew, M.D., Ph.D. Enter the physician-engineer, or "physicianeer." This summer, 25 students will matriculate in Texas A&M University's inaugural Engineering Medicine program, EnMed for short, to earn both an M.D. and an M.S. in engineering. EnMed is a joint project of Texas A&M's College of Engineering, its College of Medicine and Houston Methodist Hospital that integrates the medical school curriculum with engineering and entrepreneurship. Texas A&M tapped Pettigrew to helm EnMed as executive dean. "The convergence of the life sci- ences and the quantitative sciences and engineering has been gaining momentum over the last decade and a half, recognizing that this is the most logical and promising way to solve some of our greatest health care challenges," he said. "If we're going to try to tackle our biggest health care problems, we would have to have an approach based on this convergence." Texas A&M is one of a handful of universities across the country— including Duke, Columbia, Dartmouth, Stanford and the University of Minnesota—that have established dual-degree programs. "It became very clear that we already have a world-class engineer- ing college and we have a health sciences center," said Carrie L. Byington, M.D., dean of the Texas A&M College of Medicine and vice chancellor for health services at the Texas A&M University System. "If we were able to pair those together, we could really become leaders in the nation in an emerging field." As an engineering-based medical school, EnMed requires all students to have completed their undergraduate degree in engi- neering (electrical, mechanical, material science, etc.) or computer science. Students will begin their dual-degree program with a three- week engineering boot camp and then four years of medical school integrated with engineering and mathematics—all in Houston. "We wanted to integrate it every day throughout the week, so the engineering side of their brain could begin to think about medical problems," said Timothy B. Boone, M.D., Ph.D., co-director of the Institute for Academic Medicine at Houston Methodist and associate dean of the Houston campus for Texas A&M College of Medicine. "The way [engineers] are taught to think through a problem is so dif- ferent than the way [doctors] think through medicine." EnMed's physicianeers will be trained to serve a dual purpose: to diagnose medical problems and to develop new, creative solutions and treatments with an engineer- ing mindset. In order to graduate, students are required to invent something innovative yet clinically meaningful in areas including diagnostic tools, nanotechnology, biomaterials, telemedicine and more. Students must demonstrate that they can identify a problem, develop a workable solution and create a prototype for testing. "The kind of person we plan to train represents a new mind— different from the traditional medi- cal mind, different from the tradi- tional engineering mind, different from a physician who subsequently learns engineering, different from the engineer who subsequently learns medicine," Pettigrew said. "It is a new kind of brain that we really don't have now, not in any substantial degree. We don't have individuals who have been trained this way, to have this blended understanding. From this new mind, we can imagine that people will be better equipped to not only recognize problems, but have bright ideas, imaginative approaches, inno- vative approaches, to solving these problems and challenges." Interest in integrating For Pettigrew, becoming a physi- cianeer has been a lifelong goal. He started with a B.S. in physics from Morehouse College, earning his M.S. degree in nuclear science and engineering from Rensselaer Roderic Pettigrew, M.D., Ph.D. Credit: © Rhoda Baer

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