Interdisciplinary Collaboration Within Medicine-Based Informatics and Engineering for Societal Impact

Abstract

This chapter elaborates on the challenges and opportunities that interdisciplinary collaborations have for Medicine, Informatics and Engineering. It argues that interdisciplinarity is a means to better approach current societal challenges and therefore to achieve meaningful impact on current problems, as the ones presented in this book. We seek to open a fruitful pathway to reflect on the urgent demand to bridge knowledges, perspectives and insights, that help to overcome crisis such as the current Covid-19 pandemic. In so doing, we identify challenges coming from a national and international perspective and we analyze them in the light of a Uruguayan interdisciplinary program: the Núcleo de Ingeniería Biomédica of the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). This program has been working for almost 40 years in the interface between Medicine and Engineering, training scientists and researchers in how to foster meaningful solutions to health problems. Lessons learnt and successful narratives are presented as means to promote interdisciplinary collaborations between these and other fields of knowledge. We also build on general and also specific research strands that have historically pursued collaborations among different disciplines to approach complex problems. Several examples have also been provided in this book so as to include two powerful ideas to leverage BME and MI as means to achieve socially robust solutions for health and well-being. As chapters in this book show, the development of biomedical devices, software and systems must stem from clinical wish lists and desiderata. Technology follows, in these cases, medical specifications applying an interdisciplinary approach.