Biomedical Engineering: What Do You Really Study?
Engineering meets medicine - to develop instrumentation, imaging, sensors and solutions that improve diagnosis and treatment.
What Do You Study in Biomedical Engineering? Core Subjects, Year by Year
What do the degree courses cover?
Open a course to learn about its main topics and see what the work looks like in practice.
What do you learn in the course?Mathematics for biomedical engineering?
The course builds tools for describing biological and engineering systems that change in time and space. You learn calculus, linear algebra and differential equations and apply them to models of flow, movement, material transfer, signals and system control.
Main topics
- Derivatives, integrals and functions in several variables
- Vectors, matrices and eigenvalues
- Differential equations
- Models, approximations and dimension checking
What does it look like in practice?
For example, build a model that describes how the concentration of a drug in the blood changes according to absorption and clearance and evaluate how a change in a parameter affects the peak concentration.
What do you learn in the course?Physics for biomedical engineering?
You learn the laws of mechanics, electricity, waves and optics that explain the movement of the body and the operation of medical equipment. The course connects forces and energy to sensors, ultrasound, optical systems and electrical phenomena in tissues.
Main topics
- Mechanics, forces and energy
- Electricity, fields and circuits
- Waves, sound and ultrasound
- Light, optics and measurement
What does it look like in practice?
For example, calculate the force and torque acting on a joint while walking and check how a change in angle or weight changes the load.
What do you learn in the course?Chemistry for biomedical engineering?
The course provides a foundation in the structure of matter, reactions, equilibrium and organic chemistry for understanding drugs, medical substances and physiological environments. Learn how pH, solubility, binding and intermolecular forces affect function and stability.
Main topics
- Molecular structure and bonds
- Concentrations, equilibrium and buffers
- Basic thermodynamics and kinetics
- Functional groups and organic chemistry
What does it look like in practice?
For example, they are testing how the acidity of the environment changes the charge and solubility of a polymer that is designed for the controlled release of a drug.
What do you learn in the course?Cell biology for biomedical engineering?
You learn how cells are built, communicate, produce energy and proteins and react to a surface or stimulus. The knowledge is used to design cultures, materials, release systems and engineered tissues that are suitable for living mechanisms.
Main topics
- Membranes and substance transfer
- Organelles, energy and protein synthesis
- Signaling, cell cycle and cell death
- Cell cultures and response to substances
What does it look like in practice?
For example, the adhesion and survival of cells on two surfaces are compared and the effect of chemistry, roughness and culture conditions are separated.
What do you learn in the course?Human physiology?
The course explains how the body's systems maintain homeostasis and how physiological indicators reflect function, effort and disease. You study the heart, breathing, kidneys, nerves and control and make connections between a biological mechanism and a signal that a device can measure.
Main topics
- Heart, blood vessels and circulation
- Breathing, kidneys and fluid balance
- The nervous system and movement control
- Homeostasis, effort and feedback
What does it look like in practice?
For example, they monitor the increase in heart rate and ventilation during exertion and identify which sensors can measure each phase and what might disrupt the measurement.
Frequently Asked Questions About Biomedical Engineering
Is a degree in Biomedical Engineering difficult?
There is no single answer — difficulty depends on your background, the institution, and your chosen study pace. According to this site's estimate, The degree is highly quantitative — mathematics and formal reasoning appear in nearly every course, and this is the part most students describe as challenging, and a large share of the reading material is in English. A good way to assess fit is to review the course map on this page: if most of the subjects interest you, the effort will usually feel worthwhile.
How long does a degree in Biomedical Engineering take?
Usually 4 years (A multidisciplinary engineering degree with laboratories and a final project). Exact duration varies by institution and depends on course load and the track you choose.
Biomedical Engineering or Chemistry — which is right for me?
The degrees most closely related to Biomedical Engineering are Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. Their differences are usually in emphasis rather than the overall subject, so the fastest way to decide is to compare their course maps — what you actually study in each program, year by year. You can also open the degree comparison tool to view the differences side by side.
What is biomedical engineering?
Where engineering meets medicine: medical devices and imaging, artificial organs, physiological signal processing and medical AI. Israel is a medical-device powerhouse with hundreds of companies.
What do graduates work in?
Medical device and digital health companies (Medtronic, Philips and many startups), medical data and algorithm roles, clinical regulation, and sometimes graduate studies or medicine.
Is it limiting compared to electrical engineering?
It has less depth in any single engineering area, but the multidisciplinary breadth (electronics + mechanics + biology) is exactly what the device industry seeks. Pure chips → EE; medicine and technology → this degree.
Where can you study this?
Biomedical engineering is taught at the Technion, Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion and at Azrieli and Afeka colleges.