This wide range and rapid change in clinical engineering practice is atypical for a relatively
young profession. While the more mature engineering disciplines saw major
changes in their practice as their “body of knowledge” expanded, those changes occurred
over many decades or even centuries. Clinical engineering, however, being born in the
second half of the twentieth century, has been impacted from the start by the most prolific
growth in medical discovery and technology advance in history. And yet, the basic
elements of the profession have remained the same through all of the diverse ways that
those elements are applied.