Although the engineering colleges in the country churn out 400 biomedical engineers {BMEs} every year, the demand for this category of professionals is much more in the country. The demand is mainly growing from the hospitals, healthcare companies, medical electronics companies and career options from abroad.

Apart from hospitals, the demand for BMEs is coming from the state health departments, where the health instruments so far have been serviced and maintained on a contract basis either by the manufacturer or by independent agencies.

"In Maharashtra, the DHS has already spent a few hundred crore of rupees on healthcare equipments and machines and is incurring a heavy maintenance cost on them. As an initiative to reduce its costs, the department has decided to recruit a large number of BMEs," said Prof. S.B. Ghungrad, head of department of BME at the MGM Engineering College in Navi Mumbai. Even the railway ministry is in the process of recruiting about 800 BMEs, he said.

Of late, hospitals all over the country have also realized the importance of BMEs. Some years back the maintenance and repair of instruments in the hospitals was done by indirect disciplines like the electrical or electronics engineers. However, an element of biology in the courses is becoming essential as the devices after all deal with the health of a person. The BMEs have to understand the ill effects of usage of a device or an instrument on a human body more than a regular engineer. "The focus in hospitals has clearly shifted towards looking for engineers with a BME degree," said one of the biomedical engineers at the Hinduja Hospital.

"There was no concept like biomedical engineers about 10 years back. An electronics or electrical engineer used to take care of the maintenance. However the situation has changed totally now and the focus is purely on recruiting engineers with a BME degree," said Deepak V. Agarkhed, Sr. biomedical engineer at the Bombay Hospital.

A biomedical engineer is also finding increased opportunities in the pharmaceutical and the healthcare companies, especially in their R&D department. "There is a very good scope in the fields like bio-instrumentation, bio-mechanics and signal processing," said Ritesh Kini, a faculty member at Thadomal Shahani Engineering College.

Post privatization, medical electronics companies like Wipro-GE and Siemens have set up their service centres across the country, which require a substantial number of BMEs.

Nevertheless, there are about 10 engineering colleges {including the IIT} in the country offering BME degree course. About 400 engineers graduate out of these colleges every year.

The number is likely to triple in the next 3-5 years considering the demand, when more colleges would come forward to offer the course, Prof. Ghungrad said.

In Mumbai, only three engineering colleges namely Thadomal Shahni, D.J. Sanghvi and MGM offer a degree programme in BME. A course from the government engineering college, Chandrapur makes the total number of colleges offering the course in Maharashtra to four. There are also some key institutions in South like the Manipal Institute of Technology, and Cochin Institute of Science and Technology that offer degree programme in BME. "In the next three years the total number of colleges in Maharashtra alone offering BME degree is going to reach 15," he said.

Besides, the job opportunities, BMEs also has a great scope abroad. "About 50 per cent of the BMEs migrate abroad. A majority of them fly off to US, Europe and Canada for post-graduate studies. Some find employment in countries in the Middle East and South East Asia," said Prof. Ghungrad.