Biomedical engineering careers series
practical engineering at the front line of the health service
Amy Kinbrum
Research engineer
It was a work placement to
which she was guided by
her mechanical engineering
professor at Durham
University that set Amy
Kinbrum on the road to
biomedical engineering.
“I told him I wanted to do
something a bit different,
and I ended up at the
world-famous Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota,” she
says. “It was just amazing.”
Amy Kinbrum
What impressed Kinbrum particularly
about the Mayo Clinic was the close
interaction in research between
engineers and surgeons in developing
orthopaedic devices for joint
replacement – knees, hips, shoulders.
It inspired her to try to achieve
similar results in her own
engineering research.
Surgical input is vital in her current
work at the Corin group. Corin is the
largest UK-owned group developing
replacement joints. “The surgeons
are the end users,” she says. “We try
to bring them in at all stages of the
design.” Replacement joints are “very
much the crossover area between
engineering and biology,” and it helps
that she took biology to A level: “there
is a need for an in-depth physiology
knowledge for the job,” she says.
Kinbrum’s current work is very much
engineering. As a research engineer,
it’s her job to find new materials and
combinations of materials that might
make the hip and knee joints, and the
replacement bones and the ligaments,
of the future. It involves searching
through learned publications,
databases, commercial literature and
conferences for new formulations
that might be promising, getting hold
of samples and then investigating
in detail the properties and their
potential.
The demands are getting tougher.
“We’re living longer and we’re staying
very active much longer,” she says.
Replacement parts have to be stronger
and more durable than they were in
early days of hip and knee surgery.
Kinbrum’s own biomedical engineering
specialism, which she pursued in
a doctorate at Durham after her
undergraduate degree (and a gap
year), is in lubrication and wear.
“Essentially what we’re looking for
with joints are materials whose
surfaces will rub together smoothly
over many years and if there are
fragments that come off then they
won’t affect the joint,” she says. Add to
that demands for strength, flexibility
and bio-compatibility, and it’s a
tough challenge.
It’s also not cheap, and as well
as searching for new materials,
part of Kinbrum’s work is to put
together applications for grants from
government and other bodies to fund
detailed research. And once the goahead to investigate a new design has
been given, it’s her task to work with
colleagues to detail the design and
oversee the testing, which often uses
facilities at universities. Every new
joint design will have been through
demanding load and longevity testing
– up to 20 million cycles: these joints
have to be built to last.
Finally there’s paperwork to be done to
support the application for certification
for a new device through the medical
devices regulatory authorities on both
sides of the Atlantic.
It’s a demanding job, but Kinbrum says
the real reward is in changing people’s
lives. “I was able to go to a hospital, and
before she went into surgery, I met a
woman who could not walk across the
room. Then she had the operation and
I went back to see her later the same
day. She could walk around her bed.
It’s just amazing to think I’m part of the
mechanism that allows people to walk
again. Sometimes I have to just step
back a bit and think about that.”