Engineering Physiology II (BME 302) is a junior-level required course in the biomedical engineering curriculum at Western New England University. The course covers systems physiology by exploring 5 human body systems (nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, and GI), including their interdependence and related pathologies.

Students in BME 302 often struggle with motivation to learn the course content, partly due to the large volume of material. Additionally, many students lack practical experience in the medical device industry, and thus fail to recognize the importance of systems physiology for creating safe and effective medical technologies. This module attempts to bridge the gap between course content and real world devices by engaging students in the redesign of a carbon monoxide (CO) detector.

The danger to human health posed by carbon monoxide is discussed primarily in the unit on the cardiovascular system, but due to the interdependence of the physiological systems it is also revisited in the respiratory module. Thus this new module was inserted into the course in between the units on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

The new module was implemented during two 50-minute class sessions. On Day 1, a brief set of slides was presented to students to orient themselves on the project. Then students were introduced to the Product Archelogy Canvas, a tool that allows engineers to investigate several aspects of a technology that were involved with its development and marketing. After analyzing the CO detector with the Product Archeology Canvas, the students explored customer reviews of a particular CO detector model on Amazon. On Day 2, students were engaged in an ideation session using a Bisociation technique to come up with new concepts for redesigning the CO detector. After conducting concept selection, students created posters to showcase their new designs via a gallery walk held in the classroom space.