I don't know where to start on what I want to do.

Hi, I'm actually a foreign student going into year 4 at an Irish university for biomedical engineering funnily enough. So, if you have any specific questions about that, feel free to reply, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

With that in mind, I think it's really cool that you have a clear and definable interest in an area of BME. A lot of my colleagues started this degree only with an interest in job security and money, and of course, in Ireland, there is a great deal of that with a number of medical supply companies in the west (Boston Scientific and Medtronic spring the mind to name a few) as well as a number of start ups coming into the fold as Ireland seeks to grow its Intellectual Property base separate from the American companies that have made themselves at home here. You will have no shortage of options upon graduation, and many of my colleagues have already found jobs both in Ireland and back home if they are foreign students (i was meant to finish this year but needed to take the year off for personal reasons).

BME is a good field of study for what you're interested in, but I do recommend you keep an open mind as your interests in BME may change or become more grounded as you progress through whatever course you choose. Cyberpunk and Rick Sanchez are fine things to be inspired by and aspire to, but its important to remember that new devices are developed by teams of people and those teams have to develop those devices based on the research available to them from researchers and academics. Most importantly, both researchers and development engineers are limited by the laws of physics and their baseline understanding of those laws. To be honest with you, this last part is something that you may not get out of an engineering program itself, but something you have to develop on your own, so it is important that you are a self starter in this regard.

I also highly recommend you look carefully at other fields of engineering and read through the course and module descriptions for each program at your selected university. Speaking from the experience of my university, while a mechanical or electrical engineer may not get to experience the biomechanics or other biology specific classes a BME program has, the BME program i am in is rather broad and mostly just gives a taste of the different areas a BME can be involved in. Alternatively, these Mechanical and Electrical engineering grads will have a solid foundation in the intricacies of mechanical and electrical engineering respectively and they have the option of doing some biomedical coursework in 4th year as a specialization to help them integrate what they know into biological systems. At the same time, people who studied on my degree have a greater familiarity with things like biomaterials and the specific mechanics of the body, as well as regulatory concerns such as the MDR adopted by the EU in recent years. There are pros and cons to both, so again, i recommend to read carefully as to what each program entails at your selected university and think about what you want to be doing 4-6 years down the line. It sounds like prosthetics is where you want to go. Also, start thinking now about your work placement and potential companies you'd like to work with for that.

I hope this lengthy rambling has helped some, but if you have any other questions, please let me know. I am happy to give you more insight into my own experience studying this field in Ireland.