ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of whether an engineering-medicine education is cost-effective from the societal perspective. Since the engineering-medicine education will inevitably involve more faculty members and more technical facility and instrumentation, its cost will therefore increase accordingly. Thus, this chapter attempts to determine its cost-effectiveness by calculating the ratio of increase cost to the ratio of increase effectiveness, using a hypothetical school model of 50 students per class. The items of cost calculation include physical facility, faculty, staff, and information technology. To calculate effectiveness, several available recent reports of increasing effectiveness of healthcare delivery resulted from applying engineering-medicine principles were utilized. The preliminary data supports positive cost-effectiveness ratio (less than 1.0). It is important to understand, however, that the burden of the additional costs should be shouldered by the society, which stands to benefit from the increase healthcare effectiveness.
