Texas A&M University https://www.tamu.edu just announced that Roderic I. Pettigrew MD, PhD, first and now former Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering within NIH www.nih.gov, will be the first CEO of the university’s new Engineering Health initiative to be known as EnHealth. This initiative is aimed at educating a new kind of healthcare professional with an engineering mindset who will invent transformational technology for healthcare’s challenges.
With Texas A&M’s interdisciplinary makeup consisting of colleges of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and veterinary medicine, EnHealth will encompass the university’s Engineering Medicine program known as EnMed which was started in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital. EnMed and will serve as the first program for EnHealth.
Carrie L. Byington, Dean of the Texas A&M College of Medicine https://medicine.tamhsc.edu and Senior Vice President of the Texas A&M University Health Science Center https://tamhsc.edu and Vice Chancellor for Health Services, explained, “The university emphasizes medical and healthcare addressed to military personnel and rural communities, given the university’s land-grant history.”
She adds, “There needs to be collaboration between medicine and engineering to develop systems and technologies that can address significant problems including rural access to healthcare and remote monitoring especially for military personnel recovering from injury.”
Land in Houston near the Texas Medical Center and the Texas A&M Health Science Center’s Institute of Biosciences and Technology is expected to be the home for the EnMed partnership. EnHealth which is expected to accept students starting in the fall 2019 semester.