From 3D-printed tissue to AI-powered diagnostic tools, biomedical engineering is evolving rapidly. The next challenge is progressing those innovations from the laboratory to the clinic.
Biomedical engineering is in an exciting era, with advances across regenerative medicine, rehabilitation and AI changing what’s possible in healthcare.
From restoring mobility after spinal injuries to 3D printing biological materials like bone, the field is increasingly focused on developing technologies that work with the human body rather than simply replacing or supporting its functions.
The challenge now is ensuring these innovations can move beyond the laboratory and into everyday healthcare settings.
create spoke with Iain Brown FIEAust CPEng, Senior Rehabilitation Engineer at NSW Health and Chair of Engineers Australia’s Biomedical College, to explore some of the innovations poised to transform patient care, and what it will take to bring them into practice.
1. Tissue engineering
Rather than simply replacing damaged tissue, biomedical engineers are increasingly designing materials that actively encourage the body to repair and regenerate itself.
“The printing of biological materials with a diversity of cell structures is a mind-blowing, exciting space,” Brown said.
For example, create recently explored the work of Professor Hala Zreiqat at the University of Sydney, whose team is developing bioactive, 3D-printed ceramic implants that stimulate bone regeneration while providing structural support.
By combining advanced materials with patient-specific design, the implants are intended to become part of the body’s natural healing process rather than acting as passive replacements.
Elsewhere, researchers are applying similar approaches to soft tissues and organs.
“At UTS, for example, there are a lot of researchers in this space working to better understand cardiac tissue, and how we can use that understanding to improve health outcomes for clients who have cardiac issues,” Brown said. “And some of the work they’re doing includes printing cardiac tissue and vascular tissue.”
One research project currently underway involves stressing cardiac tissue in a controlled environment, which Brown described as “like a heart attack in a lab”.
While many of these technologies remain in the research phase, they could dramatically expand treatment options for patients with complex injuries and organ failure by creating living tissues that more closely replicate the body’s natural function.
“From the tissue engineering perspective, we can look at creating grafts or potentially even whole organs in the future that would significantly increase our capacity to deal with life-threatening organ failure,” Brown said.
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2. Rehabilitation engineering
Brown, whose own work focuses on wheelchair seating and assistive technology for people with spinal cord injuries, said rehabilitation engineering is becoming increasingly collaborative, since many modern approaches combine expertise from engineering, neuroscience and medicine.
That multidisciplinary approach is opening new avenues for treating neurological injuries that have historically had limited therapeutic options.
As create reported in 2024, researchers at UNSW are exploring a novel approach to treating spinal cord injuries and other central nervous system disorders by redesigning how existing drugs are delivered.
Rather than attempting to force medicines across the brain’s protective blood-brain barrier, the team is using gold nanoparticles and naturally occurring transport proteins to carry drugs from muscle tissue back to the brain and spinal cord via the nervous system.
“There’s another project affiliated with Griffith University in Queensland called BioSpine, which is looking at creating multimodal rehabilitation therapies that promote neuron growth and recovery from neurological damage, including spinal cord injury,” Brown said.
These projects are another indicator of the shift towards technologies that not only compensate for lost function, but actively support the body’s repair mechanisms.
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3. AI-enhanced medical devices
According to Brown, AI has significant potential to help engineers design technologies tailored to an individual patient’s physiology and clinical needs.
“An example of that is the use of artificial intelligence in dose guiding for radiotherapy,” he said. “Historically, a nuclear scientist or a radiotherapist would look at a scan and make a determination of where the best places to target the radiotherapy would be in order to get the best outcomes.
“Researchers are now exploring whether artificial intelligence can potentially come up with a dosing guide that is either as good as or better than the radiotherapist, and can do it in a fraction of the time.”
The same advances also support a broader move towards more effective medical devices.
One example is SaiiV, a wearable heart failure monitoring device developed by researchers at Western Sydney University and the University of Sydney.
This technology, profiled by create in 2024, involves a non-invasive sensor that sits on the chest and detects tiny mechanical movements generated by the heart and lungs, providing clinicians with detailed information about cardiac function without the need for invasive procedures.
The device has the potential to support earlier diagnosis, monitor patients after treatment, and enable more personalised care through continuous monitoring. Researchers are also developing a companion app that would allow clinicians to interpret the data and assess patient risk more quickly.
As AI becomes increasingly embedded within medical technology, the focus is shifting from simply collecting patient data to generating faster, more personalised clinical insights that can support decision-making.
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Translating innovation into impact
With all this momentum in biomedical research, Brown believes the greatest challenge is no longer developing new technologies, but translating them into clinical practice.
Limited access to commercialisation funding in Australia means many promising technologies are ultimately developed overseas, particularly in the US, where venture capital investment in biomedical innovation is more readily available, he explained.
“It’s an interesting challenge to try and work out how we advocate for biomedical translation to occur domestically, so that Australia can really leverage the excellent work we’ve got going on locally. Because we have the capacity to be an international leader in biomedical research and design.”
Meanwhile, as AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, researchers, clinicians and regulators are also grappling with how it should be implemented safely and responsibly.
“There are all kinds of ethical questions,” Brown said. “For example, if we’re going to bring AI into this, what are the implications if something were to not give you an optimal result? Who is liable for the work of this guide?”
Another ongoing challenge is establishing a clear professional identity for biomedical engineering, which encompasses an extraordinarily broad range of specialisations.
“The way in which biomedical engineering is understood and treated historically has not been a very good reflection of what biomedical engineering looks like,” Brown said.
“And in most states in Australia, there’s not a requirement to be registered as a biomedical engineer, which means there are few safeguards around the practice of biomedical engineering.”
To help address this, Engineers Australia’s Biomedical College is preparing to release an updated Area of Practice descriptor that better articulates the diversity and shared foundations of biomedical engineering.
Brown hopes this will lead to a more unified and nuanced understanding of the profession among engineers, regulators and the broader healthcare sector.
“We have to both hold to the diversity of expression that we have, but also find the commonality,” he said.
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