CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Bioengineering has evolved steadily and increasingly over the last two or three decades, but especially when it crossed the centuries dividing line, as if the millennium transition meant a unique omen leap. In the beginning, it was a simple mixture of a few ingredients, and people talked of Medical Electronics (ME) as a multidiscipline. Step by step, the link became more intimate, and it was called an interdiscipline, because there was free crossing from one area into the other. Nowadays, new disciplines show up, reminding of transgenic organisms, where the very deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is modified. Thus, we should speak of transdiscipline. Far off is the naïve 1950s idea of putting together in a room a bunch of engineers, biologists, and physicians to produce ME!