Dear aspirant....!!

Biomedical Engineering sector in India is broadly divided into 3 groups :

1. Sales, servicing and Maintenance
2. Biomedical Engineer at hospitals
3. Research and Development at healthcare units.

The expectations from Biomedical Engineering jobs in India are very high, as students and parents compare it with highly paid streams like IT, CS, and others. But, career as a biomedical engineer in India has more to offer than just money.

India is just embracing Biomedical Engineering opportunities with its booming healthcare sector in the recent 10 years. Yet in this short span, biomedical field has seen plausible growth in India. Biomedical sector in India offers constant growth in both knowledge and money, if not immediate rise to peak like IT sector. So, students should have a steady mentality to grasp all that comes in their way and be prepared for leaps that offer more practical experience and knowledge.

Sales, Servicing and Maintenance profile deals with the sales and servicing of devices, equipments and instruments used at hospitals. This primarily includes ECG, USG, ESU, syringe and infusion pumps, ventilators, defibrillators, anaesthesia machines, x-ray units, CR-DR units, etc. Well established biomedical companies undergo sales and servicing of other important machines like CT scanners, MRI scanners, PET-CT scanners, CathLab units, etc.

Once sold, these machines obviously have to be callibrated and maintained very often to prevent unexpected breakdowns. So that extends the role as Maintenance Engineer and Field Service Engineer. This profile also extends as Application Specialist where the Biomedical Engineer gets to interact with primary healthcare professionals like doctors and nurses, to explain them and take seminars on the working of medical instruments once they are installed in the hospital.

Usually, students after their UG (B.E or B.Tech) want to work immediately at big companies like GE, Philips, etc. But that is not the case anyways. It is wise to work for a minimum of 1–2 years at smaller companies and gather all knowledge and professional contacts, then approach big companies. Similarly, these smaller companies too prefer freshers (0 year experience) UG biomedical engineers than PG engineers. This is mainly because the companies have to pay less for UG engineers than PG engineers and also due to the fact that UG engineers have an utmost need and urge to get a job(money), they tend to work more actively than others.

Biomedical Engineer at hospitals

This is the exact role for which the students have studied all their years. As a biomedical engineer at hospitals, engineers work round the clock by performing daily callibration of devices in all the departments in the hospital, attend to breakdown calls, schedule routine checks and maintenance of instruments and call the company service engineers accordingly, generate audit reports, planning of a department in the hospital, biomedical waste management, etc.

This too opens up an ocean of practical knowledge and professional contacts with doctors, healthcare providers and research scientists that help while undergoing a leap or change in career fields.

Research and Development

Biomedical engineers play a crucial role in developing technologies that help both the rich and needy. Biomedical engineers as Reaseach scientists work in close relationship with doctors and understand their need regarding a particular issue (eg. Image processing techniques to improve medical images for better diagnosis) and develop solutions for those real world problems.

Big companies like GE, Philips, etc constantly indulge themselves in Reaseach and development, especially in imagers and scanners, to improve the quality of service and ease of use to technicians.

Hope your query is solved!

All the best!