A summary account of the historical development and present state of the role of biomedical physics-engineering in the education of the healthcare professions

Abstract

This paper presents a summary account of the historical development and present state of the role of biomedical physics-engineering (BMPE) in the education of the healthcare professions (HCP) as elicited from the English language literature. We first present a historical overview of the role of physicists and engineers in medicine as a backdrop to a better understanding of their role in the education of the HCP. This is followed by a review of the literature regarding the educator role itself. Included are relevant papers indexed principally in the three main healthcare related databases i.e., MEDLINE (search period: 1950 to present), CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature, 1982 to present) and EMBASE (Excerpta Medica, 1974 to present) and the educational database ERIC (1966 to present) with the words 'physics' or 'engineering' (and any relevant derivatives such as 'biophysics') in the title.