Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Biomedical Engineering

The field of biomedical engineering often involves research with a requirement for novel methods of data acquisition. A purely engineering type of approach applied to a biomedical situation may not be an ideal solution, particularly when patients are involved in a study. Interdisciplinary collaboration between medical experts and engineering researchers allows the work to progress with an improved quality of results. A collaborative research effort involving the Royal Brisbane Children’s Hospital and the Queensland University of Technology has been looking a gait analysis of children who require the assistance of walking frames. Gait analysis normally involves only the measurement of forces acting on the floor over which the patient is walking. When a walking frame is used, some of the forces are exerted through the frame, rather than the floor, and this information is lost. This research requires the measurement of forces on the walking frame using methods that are suitable for the gait laboratory environment. Involvement from the medical fields allowed an engineering solution to be designed that met the needs of the required measurements and at the same time considered the suitability of the equipment from a medical perspective