Aprendizaje progresivo basado en proyectos en el ámbito de la Ingeniería Biomédica: diseño, construcción y programación de un ECG basado en un microcontrolador de bajo coste

In the current situation of Health and Education. the Andalusia Tech International Excellence Campus drew up a curriculum for three degrees that are intended to cover the need of Computer Engineer within the healthcare industry. These degrees, with a common first cycle of two years, have three specialties in the second cycle. One of them is the Engineering, which trains engineers with knowledge of Computer Hardware level for the design and maintenance of machinery and instrumentation for application in hospitals and health centers. This degree is currently offered at the Technical Superior School of Computer Science at the University of Seville. In this context, the course Biomedical has a fundamental role for learning the operation and design of small and medium-scaled instruments. In this paper, a step-by-step and problem-based learning is explained inside the Instrumentation course. The main objective of this learning mechanism is to provide basic knowledge about performance and design medical instruments with several types of electronic sensors and actuators, while students are introduced in the programming of a low-cost Arduino-based to handle these peripherals. Progressively they integrate the knowledge of all practices sesions throughout the course to finally be able to prepare and develop a portable electrocardiograph by a microcontroller, a probe, an operational amplifier, a graphical display, a prototyping board and several basic electronic components such as potentiometers, pushbuttons and leds for controlling the operation of the instrument.