Biomedical engineering for sustainable development

Biomedical engineering (BME) is well recognised for its crucial support to health workers, medical technology manufacturers, policymakers and patients. In a fast-changing world facing novel, global and more complex challenges, BME is called to gain a more holistic dimension with new risks and opportunities. Indeed, the unprecedented resource-limited condition resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that even wealthy countries can fail in safeguarding their citizens and healthcare systems, and that no one country can isolate or act alone. We have put together this volume to highlight the key role of BME in addressing technical, social, economic and even environmental issues at a global and local level, leveraging on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are based on the principle of “leaving no one behind”. The book, which accompanies the XLI GNB school, offers readers an overarching view of the applications of BME in low resource settings, based on problem-solving through a responsible frugal and contextualized approach, key to fostering the accessibility to safe healthcare without borders.