Michigan Health Engineered for All Lives, or M-HEAL, is a student group at the University of Michigan that was founded in the fall of 2006. It was founded by a group of biomedical engineering students who recognized that, while extracurricular engineering project teams existed on campus, none were specific to the field of biomedical engineering. They identified global health as a discipline that would enable them to do biomedical engineering design while also helping those in underserved populations and low resource settings. The initial goal of M-HEAL was to apply the knowledge of engineering students to work in global health, but our mission has grown to include a multi-disciplinary effort to develop sustainable solutions.

 

 

Undergraduate and graduate students from all engineering disciplines, business, design, biological sciences, and the humanities accomplish this goal through evaluating unmet medical needs in hospitals and clinics in the developing world and designing, building and testing medical devices to meet these needs. Additionally, M-HEAL regularly volunteers at World Medical Relief of Detroit to sort medical equipment/supplies to be sent to hospitals and clinics in need around the globe. M-HEAL members are also involved in social entrepreneurship, and plan to create socially responsible mechanisms of implementation. See the “Projects” page for more information on the exciting design projects that M-HEAL members are currently working on.