• Question: Computer science already aids some medical scenarios, is it likely that in the future these two disciplines will be viewed as biomedical engineering?

    Asked by to Ian, Vicky, Sergey on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sergey Lamzin

      Sergey Lamzin answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      No, Computer Science is a field on its own. It’s main focus is on determining what can be computed at all (trust me, not all problems are actually solvable) and then on how we can do this the fastest way.

      Medical sciences need computers to analyse their data, but they don’t care how fast it is done as long as it is done.

      It’s like math and physics. Physics uses math a lot and relies on it, but they are two different disciplines.

    • Photo: Vicky Schneider

      Vicky Schneider answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      why not…there are more and more techniques and expertise to get there indeed 🙂

    • Photo: Ian Simpson

      Ian Simpson answered on 22 Jun 2014:

      There already is a field called biomedical engineering which is largely concerned with using engineering principles to help design solutions for the healthcare sector :-

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomedical_engineering

      There are also other computer science disciplines that are making huge impacts in healthcare. One is Medical Informatics (in which we have just opened a new research centre). This subject is focussed on using data from clinicians to try to learn useful information that can help improve clinical care. This can range from something as mundane as designing better database systems to handle medical data across the NHS to developing new algorithms to pick out axon tracks in brain scans.

      Another growing area is “Synthetic Biology” where engineers are using knowledge of biological structures, control systems, genes and proteins to “engineer” building blocks (the idea of a BioBrick is quite popular at the moment) that can be used to construct synthetic cells or organisms to carry out jobs. Examples are “Biosensors” that detect certain chemicals and produce fluorescent signals or designed proteins that have new properties such as a helical molecule that can carry Oxygen but not Carbon Monoxide.

      There already are and there will continue to be really large areas of overlap between many disciplines in science as groups of people come together from different backgrounds to tackle existing and emerging problems in innovative ways. In our group we have biologists, mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, computer scientists and even an artist ! 😮

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