Interdisciplinary Capstone Engineering Projects for Medical Technologies Design: Cross Discipline Design and Communication Challenges

This paper reports observations made during a 5-year implementation of Interdisciplinary Capstone Engineering Projects for Medical Technologies Design at McGill University between 2019-2023. This effort was realized in the context of a NSERC Engineering Design Chair for unifying the capstone projects across all departments in the Faculty of Engineering in order to strengthen the diversity of students design training. Students experience, examples of interdisciplinary training, development of assessment methods and industrial sponsors feedback are reported. It was observed that interdisciplinary teams acquired the Design graduate attributes required by the Canadian accreditation board based on graded work and were able to overcome the communication barriers. Various design and communication activities were assessed including conceptual design, design embodiment, design prototypes and testing and reports writing, oral presentations, team meetings. Students were also required to make a design notebook logging their concepts in the form of sketches, minutes of meetings, with concept generation and selection methodologies. Metrics needed to be developed for the different accreditation criteria, questionnaire were elaborated for the sponsors and surveys were implemented for assessing current students and alumni training satisfaction level. The results are summarized with histograms, tables and percentages. A comparison between prior implementation period and post implementation period is made. The results are analyzed in terms of Design training proficiency, taking into account the skills acquired for designing, manufacturing and testing. The sponsors information reported the appreciations of individual contribution, incorporation of clients needs, team's communication with the client project and team's achievement of client objectives. It was observed that the students were globally interested by the multidisciplinary projects. It is concluded that the teams involved with the design of Medical Technologies were successful in achieving the assigned design projects and were able to overcome the communication challenges linked to the different engineering disciplines. This resulted in excellent academic accomplishments, working prototypes and appreciation by the sponsors.