INWED (#INWED17) was set up by the Women’s Engineering Society to focus attention on the varied opportunities for women across the sector, and to encourage young women to take up the profession. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers continues to play an active role in raising the profile of women in engineering and this year I am hosting an event on 22 June entitled ‘Women in Medical Technology’. This panel seminar will focus on some of the talented women behind the design, development and production of medical devices, apps, diagnostics tools and assistive equipment, used across the health and care sectors.
People are living longer. The global population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, there are 256 birth every minute across the world and an estimated 2.5 million people in the UK living with cancer. From birth to death, we put our trust in medical specialists and the equipment they use to ensure we have a long and healthy life. The global Med Tech industry plays a fundamental part in addressing these issues and is growing at a rapid rate. The UK too, is a significant player in the industry, employing over 90,000 people and having a turnover of £17bn (6% of the global market).
However, as with many engineering sectors, the number of women employed across the industry, remains very low compared to their male colleagues; the average figure across the sector being 9%. A survey undertaken by AdvaMed (the Advanced Medical Technology Association) in the USA in 2015 showed that only 17% of women held senior management roles and across the top nineteen med tech firms only 33% of MDs and CEOs were female and of that, 57% worked in academia.
Despite these rather subdued figures, the med tech and biomedical fields are attracting a larger proportion of women than any other, with a growing number of UK universities offering dedicated BEng and MEng courses in biomedical and medical engineering. This is primarily due to the nature of the subject, which provides opportunities to tackle some of the biggest societal challenges facing human-kind, such as our ageing population and increasing cases of chronic illness such as diabetes and obesity. Women are also coming to healthcare engineering through a variety of routes; not just the traditional science and engineering subjects of mechanical, electronics and IT, but also through clinical and nursing professions.
Nicola Cawthorne, is an NHS Clinical Engineer and Medical Devices Safety and Quality Officer at Addenbrooke's Hospital. She told me that it was a chance visit to a university which had turned her towards healthcare engineering. “I wanted to be a vet and got a Nuffield scholarship to look at the use of technology in veterinary medicine during a summer holiday while I was in school. On a day visit to Liverpool University I found out that they had a medical engineering course that I could apply for.” Nicola told me. “Until that day I didn’t know that there was such a thing as medical engineering.”
It is often the case that young girls get little support when trying to find out about STEM careers, especially in engineering, Nicola‘s only recourse was to go to the engineering department on her own. “Most of my mates who were studying STEM subjects were more interested in biological sciences.”
Nadine Stech, Senior Control Design Engineer at Blatchford studied Engineering Cybernetics and is currently in the final stages of her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Surrey. “What attracted me into engineering was the fact that it was about applying science in a meaningful way. In healthcare technology and prosthetics you look into the fundamental principles such as biomechanics and then try to replicate the human movement with a technical system. The key aspect is to understand the science and apply it, while also considering the limitations of the device and at the same time maintain as much of the key functionalities as possible.”
Engineers in the medical technology sector also find themselves working at the leading edge of areas such as robotics, sensor and imaging development, 3D printing, artificial intelligence, big data and mobile health. This is very true for Nadine who uses a range of engineering skills to develop innovative products, like the award-winning Linx prosthetic leg.
All three of us agreed that the INWED events played a key role in highlighting the wide range of opportunities within engineering and gave young women who ‘might not think engineering is for them’, an opportunity to ‘test the water’ and ask questions of women already in the profession. Nadine said, “INWED is very important as it showcases a variety of engineering disciplines and makes young women aware of the potential of a career in the engineering profession. It is about providing information and new choices.”
When I set out to take up an engineering career I was very lucky, I came from a family of (predominantly male) engineers, including my dad, who encouraged me to ‘not give up’ on my dream. But not every young girl has that family link to the industry. I asked Nicola and Nadine what they would say to their younger selves, or to a young girl considering engineering and specifically med tech, as a career. They both said that it was a very versatile and ever changing profession; med tech offered a wide range of opportunities to change people’s lives in positive ways. They pointed out that the work was varied and brought many challenges, but both agreed, as an engineering discipline it was unusual, in that it often drew on skills and experiences from their personal life as well as their training.
The INWED hashtags this year also includes #menasallies. Whilst the day is all about women, we could not and will not achieve our goal of parity in the work place if we do not include men in the discussion. I have had some excellent male role models in my career and have rarely felt that I have not been treated as an equal in my discipline. And this is true of advocates such as Daniel Marsden, also a clinical engineer and colleague of Nicola’s.
He agreed with the importance of men as allies and said, “Everyone has different eyes; different perspectives. By encouraging everyone, we actively seek new knowledge and opportunities that could be locked inside someone’s mind. Without the exposure to engineering we stifle and prevent those ideas from flourishing. Not everyone needs to be an engineer, but by allowing them to see into the engineering world we can open those eyes and ours to the future. The fostering of passionate communicators at events such as INWED, broadens the professions appeal to the younger generations.”
This for me sums up the real emphasis of INWED day. It is the opportunity to demonstrate to society the exciting and creative world of engineering. It is a chance to show that it is not a stereotype, but a unique, lifesaving and life-changing profession. Medical Technology and healthcare engineering offers young women the opportunity to really change that traditional image and I am looking forward to hearing all the speakers at this year’s event.