Amphiphilic and hydrogel polymers are useful biomedical materials. This paper presents some recent work on new syntheses of such materials. Amphiphilic gels have been prepared by the Diels-Alder reaction of poly(ethylene glycol)s that contain acetylene dicarboxylate groups along the main chain, with furan-ended oligomers. Hexyl methacrylate oligomers with methacrylate end groups have been prepared. These have been copolymerized with hydrophilic monomers to yield segmented amphiphilic gels.