• Question: Whats the difference between a medical scientist and a health engineer?

    Asked by daviesl3 to Joanne, Martin, Paige on 22 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Joanne Davies

      Joanne Davies answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      Another good question.

      I am not a health engineer and I think there may be some confusion here because we are all lumped into the same category in the health zone. I am qualified in Product Design and Manufacture and I currently specialise in the design and manufacture of medical devices.

      I did look up ‘health engineer’ though and the most common thing that comes up is ‘Public Health Engineering.’ I don’t know a lot about that although we do have environmental and health policies that we follow in the work place .

      Medical scientists conduct research on disease and their causes so they can help to make vaccinations and medicine to cure them. 🙂 Then people like me can make those medicines and vaccines and get them to the people who need them. 🙂

    • Photo: Martin Wallace

      Martin Wallace answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      I’m not sure if there is a definite difference between the two. I would say that a medical scientist deals a lot more with how the human body behaves and the biology and chemistry of it – whereas a health engineer would be more to do with making things to help the human body, using physics.
      I think both of them could be used for the same things in lots of cases, and you could could probably mix them up, like having a medical engineer or a health scientist. It depends what you think sounds the coolest (I choose medical engineer, or even bio-medical engineer)

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      The difference between a medical scientist and a ‘health zone’ engineer is mostly in the fact that engineers trully BUILD AND DESIGN things!!! A medical Scientist conducts research in the lab, looks at how the body works, may study cellular reactions under the microscope, and uses lots of equipment that a biological or biomedical engineer might use. The difference is that medical scientists are often look to DISCOVER or DESCRIBE what happens in the human body, like finding out about a whole new disease. Engineers in the health zone or Biological engineers are typically looking to DESIGN something new, maybe a new microscope to look at those diseases in the human body, maybe new drugs attached to nanoparticles or nanobots designed to target those diseases in the body!!! An engineering project always aimed to finish with a PRODUCT, something that the engineer has designed new and built!!!!!

      Biological, biomedical, and health Engineers work with medical and biological scientists to solve different parts of the same problems!!! They compliment one another.

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