Panel Discussion: Women's Health and Biomedical Engineering

Session Title for Website and App: Panel

Discussion: Women's Health and Biomedical Engineering

Special Session Program Description: There is growing interest within the biomedical engineering community on the application of engineering tools and techniques to the field of women’s health. Women’s health—as defined by medical issues that differently or disproportionately affect women—has generally lagged other areas of health research but have been of significant recent interest worldwide. In the US, the recent Presidential Executive Order on Advancing Women's Health Research has resulted in a flurry of activity in this field. Two NSF-funded workshops focusing explicitly on engineering aspects of women’s health will have taken place in the summer of 2024:

(1) The ERVA (Engineering Research Visioning Alliance) Visioning Event “Transforming Women’s Health Outcomes through Engineering” June 5-6 at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
(2) The ElevateHER Conference: Engineering Innovations for Women’s Health Discovery” August 1-2 at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX

This proposed panel discussion, led by the co-chairs of each of the two events (Oyen and Myers for ERVA and Raghavan and Moore for ElevateHER) will summarize the events of the workshops, which have complementary focuses and aims. Miller, a planned participant in both workshops, will moderate the discussion. The panel discussion will be held with an aim towards proposing a BMES Special Interest Group on Women’s Health and Biomedical Engineering, to help consolidate the emerging researchers within this exciting new field, as there is currently no society “home” for the topic despite its rapid growth.

Committee, Sig, or Organization Title: n/a; proposal for future SIG in the works.