In January the American Association for the Advancement of Science hosted a panel in Washington, D.C., on the emerging field of convergence, which integrates engineering, the physical sciences and life sciences to solve problems in health care, energy and other sectors. Speakers described the movement as an integration of disciplines that will require changes to the peer review system, funding mechanisms, the structure of academic departments and the training of science’s next generation. Science News writer Rachel Ehrenberg attended and excerpted comments by Robert Langer, an MIT engineer who develops materials for biomedical applications.
So how are materials moved into medicine?… Almost always, the way that this happened is medical doctors, clinicians, when they wanted to solve a medical problem, would go to their house and find an object that somehow resembled the organ or tissue they wanted to fix and they’d use it on a person.