View the latest medical engineering news

An interview with Dr Michael Watson, Senior Design Engineer at Finsbury Orthopaedics

Career you wanted when you were at school?
I didn’t know what I wanted to do; but I knew my mindset and abilities would lead me into a design or engineering related discipline. I thought there was very little information available to know what each career choice would really involve – what someone in a particular career would actually be doing on a daily basis was a mystery to me.

University education:
BEng Mechanical Engineering, Leeds University.
MSc Biomedical Engineering, University of Aberdeen.
PhD, University of Aberdeen (Finite element study of a medical device)

When did you decide you wanted to work in Medical Engineering?
During the final year of my first degree: Medical Engineering was an option to specialise. Engineering and medicine both felt like familiar ground (family members and their friends were mostly nurses or engineers) and to see engineering applied to medicine really caught my attention. It seemed a noble cause, very interesting and because it is a relatively new industry I thought it likely I would often find new and interesting things to do.

Current job, including a brief description of duties
Senior Design Engineer for a medical device company, designing joint replacements and surgical instrumentation. The role involves project management and all aspects of project implementation, from research to placing product on hospital shelves and ongoing support after product launch.

Previous jobs
Research assistant in the Biomechanics Group at the University of Aberdeen.
Design Engineer for a joint replacement medical device company.

How do you see the future of Medical Engineering in the next 10 years?
Considering joint replacement alone, it is hard to say and depends on what joint one is considering. There is a lot of desire to use computer based technologies to reduce operating time and improve surgical accuracy. However, we are still learning about the kinematics and patient perceptions of some joint replacements (what makes a replaced joint feel more natural to the patient), so the information that one feeds into the computers may not be quite there yet. I think that pressure on the industry to reduce costs will increase and we will be looking for ways to make joint replacement more inexpensive while making a replaced joint feel more natural to the patient. We will also see more of the ‘small joint’ replacements and an increase in implant longevity for younger, more active patients.

Advice for any young members that want a career in Medical Engineering:
Be proactive. It is an increasingly popular but still relatively small industry and one needs to stand out a bit. A good all-round grounding in engineering is as useful as a specialised medical engineering course as good engineering skills are transferable. Knowledge of essential medical engineering issues and an appreciation of the medical device regulations will help.

Back to top