The preparation of capsules for medical and industrial use can be achieved via several conventional routes, yielding either hard or soft receptacles, depending on the type and the content of the material to be encapsulated. Together with tablets, capsules are amongst the most commonly used means of administering medication and ...

In the context of scientific and technical texts, meaning is usually embedded in noun compounds and the semantic interpretation of these compounds deals with the detection and semantic classification of the relation that holds between the compound's constituents. Semantic relation mining, the technology applied for marking up, interpreting, extracting and ...

A neural recording amplifier having programmable gain and bandwidth is presented. The gain can be digitally programmed using 6 bits from 100x to 1100x in steps of 100x. The low-frequency cutoff can be varied from less than 10Hz to above 100Hz to accept or reject field potentials while the high-frequency ...

Electrical impedance tomography has been used in the medical environment for many years. Recently it has been used for brain function imaging. This type of technology uses a large number of electrodes on the scalp, examples in the literature ranging from 8 to 64. In this paper, the composite impedance ...

HTTP compression is a technique specified as part of the W3C HTTP 1.0 standard. It allows HTTP servers to take advantage of GZIP compression technology that is built into latest browsers. A brief survey of medical informatics websites show that compression is not enabled. With compression enabled, downloaded files sizes ...

In this contribution, a first prototype for mobile respiratory motion detection using optical fibers embedded into textiles is presented. The developed system consists of a T-shirt with an integrated fiber sensor and a portable monitoring unit with a wireless communication link enabling the data analysis and visualization on a PC. ...

Endoscopic capsule is a recent medical technology with important clinical benefits but suffering from a practical handicap: long exam annotation times. This paper proposes and compares two approaches (Bayesian and support vector machines) that can be used to segment the gastrointestinal tract into its four major topographic areas, allowing the ...

In recent years, there have been high expectations for RFID technologies applied in the medical field, particularly for automatic identification and location of patients and medical supplies. However, few studies have measured the applicability of currently available RFID technologies in a medical environment. To determine the technical factors that affect ...

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this article is to provide an overview of current trends in medical multimedia retrieval. This state of the art is then compared with trends and techniques in the Web 2.0 field that addresses several of the problems of current multimedia retrieval and may help in solving ...

Medical video is seeing greater use for a wider variety of applications, but the technology and terminology continue to confuse many users. As a result, hospitals risk buying the wrong equipment or buying higher-specification equipment than they need. This article untangles the field's terminology and provides the fundamental technological background ...

When performing the ABC's of care for the trauma patient, airway management is of paramount importance. Management of the airway is often difficult because medical personnel caring for the patient do not commonly intubate patients or manage airways. To accomplish endotracheal intubation, a direct line of sight must be accomplished ...

Despite remarkable progress, pharmacotherapy in general, including that for the treatment of depressive conditions, has often ignored the magnitude and clinical significance of the huge interindividual variations in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, resulting in poor compliance, suboptimal therapeutic effects, and treatment resistance. Advances in pharmacogenomics and computer modeling technologies hold promise ...

Tissue Engineering Regenerative Medical (TERM) products are a new technology currently in human clinical testing for a variety of unmet medical needs involving tissue and organ dysfunction and failure. Safety evaluation of TERM products overlaps 3 established product paradigms: pharmaceuticals (biologically active substances), transplantation (cells or tissue), and devices (biomaterials). ...

As people age, they recognize that social conduct has become worse. This is not just a failing of the young but also a reflection of modern technology, notably the cellular telephone. We observed that the behaviour induced by the use of such devices is so egregious as to be medically ...

This article examines historical and ideological trajectories that have made looking at the fetus via ultrasound a normal part of being pregnant for many women around the world. How did looking into so unlit a bodily space as the uterus become so natural? So everyday? So habit-forming? The answers lie ...

To identify the current familiarity and use of Web 2.0 technologies by medical students and qualified medical practitioners, and to identify the barriers to its use for medical education. A semi-structured online questionnaire survey of 3000 medical students and 3000 qualified medical practitioners (consultants, general practitioners and doctors in training) ...

A processing technology has been developed that can be applied to many different fine wire medical alloys to improve their fatigue properties. This technology has been used to process a low inclusion alloy, 35 cobalt-35 nitinol-20 chromium-10 Molybdenum (ASTM F562 chemistry), hereinafter referred to as System A. After processing, this ...

Medical facilities must streamline their processes if they want to maintain quality care while reducing costs. In 2005, Benedictine Hospital's struggle to operate more productively, efficiently, and profitably dissipated when it streamlined the administrative process of billing patients for chemotherapy treatments. In 2006, it applied similar changes to effectively treat ...

Despite belief to the contrary, technologically sophisticated medical care can be established in developing countries. The process requires intense effort. Preliminary work must include resolving ethical dilemmas, acquiring adequate funding, establishing supply lines, and cultivating proper political support within the host country. Our organization, WORTH (World Organization of Renal Therapies) ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: We present three cases wherein a new radiologic technique was used to facilitate performance of retrocrural celiac plexus blockade. Three patients presented to our institution for performance of celiac plexus block for relief of intractable upper abdominal pain. One carried the diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis, one abdominal ...

Radiofrequency ablation of superficial and perforator veins for venous insufficiency has emerged as a leading alternative to traditional vein stripping operations. This percutaneous technique can be performed in less than an hour using local anesthetic or sedation. The VNUS Closure catheters (VNUS Medical Technologies, San Jose, California) work by resistive ...

Cell-based biosensors represent the next revolution in medical diagnostics, offering a number of significant advantages, such as high speed, portability and low cost. The present review focuses on the most successful technologies used for the detection of ultra-low concentrations of bioactive analytes (such as metabolic markers and pathogens) in clinical ...

Camps for children with medical conditions have been in existence for decades. With the advent of new medical technology and research advances, children with medical illnesses are living long lives with chronic conditions. Camp provides an ideal setting to help these youth manage and cope with their disease. Using camps ...

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are affected every year by skeletal complications of oncologic disease. Recent developments in medical oncology, radiation oncology and radiology, particularly with respect to the use of bisphosphonate medication and radiofrequency techniques, have served to greatly lessen the morbidity associated with metastatic skeletal disease. Similarly, there ...

Studies of community reactions to biotechnology and genetic engineering (GE), in particular, have identified a number of correlates of acceptance, including the field of application of a technology and various characteristics of the perceiver. Factor analysis of acceptability ratings (N=686) of 12 applications of new technologies revealed three factors, denoting ...

New assisted reproduction technologies provide access to, and require the handling of, genetic material. Such material includes gametes or early-stage embryos. After a selective appraisal of some of the most relevant developments facilitated by the access to germ cells and embryos, this paper identifies some major ethical challenges created by ...

The analysis of the welfare of the child in the context of medically assisted reproduction is divided in two parts: the first part addresses the risks associated with the would-be parent(s), the second part focuses on possible risks inherent in the technologies and treatments themselves. The risk factors connected with ...

BACKGROUND: Anesthesia information management systems (AIMS) implementation is increasing, but there are no published recommendations from anesthesia professional societies to guide configuration and policy decisions that affect billing, security, medical-legal, and compliance issues. METHODS: A 45-question structured survey was developed by a committee of the Society for Technology in Anesthesia ...

Until the mid-1980s, it was believed that the vectorcardiogram presented a greater specificity, sensitivity and accuracy in comparison to the conventional electrocardiogram, in the diagnosis of the different heart diseases. Recent studies revealed that the vectorcardiogram still is superior to the electrocardiogram in very specific situations, such as in the ...

The relatively high complication rates associated with early prostheses and techniques eventually led to the improvement of implants and refinement of the surgical procedures. Almost all surgical techniques improve over time by leading to less invasive approaches. The modern era's communications technologies, coupled with more sophisticated marketing techniques, has dramatically ...

This study investigated the advantages and challenges of using Medication Electronic Monitoring System (MEMS) technology to examine adherence among pediatric kidney transplant patients. Twenty-nine patients participated in the study, with a mean age of 14.03 yr (SD = 3.34, range 8-19 yr). Patients were given a MEMS bottle and cap ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for (1) promoting and protecting public health by assuring the safety and effectiveness of medicines and medical devices and (2) advancing public health by helping to speed innovations that make medicines and foods safer, more effective, and more affordable. The genomics revolution ...

Many basic scientists and clinicians support the right to obtain and enforce patents on drugs, diagnostic tests, medical devices, and most recently, genes. Although those who develop useful drugs, diagnostic and screening tests, and medical technologies have the right to expect a fair return for their efforts and risks, current ...

Despite pressure from various governmental and non-governmental groups and agencies in the US, many physicians continue to resist the need to measure and improve their clinical practices. Physicians do, however, willingly engage in the process of technology assessment so that new innovations can be introduced into their clinical activities. Technology ...

For the past two decades, nanotechnology has been the realm of the physicist and the surface chemist. Medicine has largely ignored nanotechnology as a specific field because medical research teams had worked with nanoscale structures for many years. However, over the last 5 years, a body of work has emerged ...

The extraordinary successes and refinement of modern telemedicine applications in recent years have been diminished somewhat by the anachronistic licensure laws of the 50 state jurisdictions that limit the practice of medicine to specific state geographic boundaries. This approach is deficient when applied to telemedicine because, with the advent of ...

We present a dynamic general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy and the medical sector in which the adoption of new medical treatments is endogenous and the demand for medical services is conditional on the state of technology. We use this model to prepare 75-year medical spending forecasts and a ...

The purpose of this literature review was to survey available information and research related to routine three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound technology in obstetrics, with an emphasis on current medical uses, safety, and availability issues. Several data bases, including Cochrane, WHO, NIH, CINALH, Blackwell Synergy, ERIC, PubMed, and Medline, were used along ...

The aim of the French-speaking Virtual Medical University project (UMVF) is to share common resources and specific tools in order to improve medical training. Digital video on IP is an attractive tool for higher education but there are a number of obstacles to widespread implementation. This paper describes the UMVF ...

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) can be attributed with the earliest recorded comments regarding the manner in which humans walk. It was not until the renaissance that further progress was made through the experiments and theorising of Giovanni Borelli (1608-1679). Although several scientists wrote about walking through the enlightenment period it was ...

To help counteract patient safety issues, the Institute of Medicine suggested that hospitals "make greater use of information technology in prescribing and dispensing medications... including the adoption of smart infusion pumps". Recently, KLAS conducted a study on smart pump usage, with extra attention being given to issues such as the ...

Since the spring of 1999, new French radiation protection legislation has allowed the use of passive dosemeters, other than the silver emulsion film badge, for the measurement of H(p)(10). Faced with the eventual obsolescence of its dosimetry system, Electricité de France (EDF, the French electricity provider) initiated a comparative study ...

Since the early 1990s, minimally invasive techniques have been increasingly used in ever more and diversified fields of application. These techniques have some shared characteristics (predominant role of medical imaging, intensive use of new communication technologies, a multidisciplinary medical and scientific framework, etc.) but also shared specific problems (high-tech tools ...

Secure, flexible and efficient storing and accessing digital medical data is one of the key elements for delivering successful telemedical systems. To this end grid technologies designed and developed over the recent years and grid infrastructures deployed with their use seem to provide an excellent opportunity for the creation of ...

Qualidigm and the Connecticut State Medical Society-Independent Practice Association (CSMS-IPA), Inc. have conducted a survey of the physicians participating in the CSMS-IPA to assess current use of health information technology in their offices and their plans for future use. The survey was conducted to assist eHealth Connecticut, a Connecticut-based nonprofit ...

Microfluidic large-scale integration (mLSI) refers to the development of microfluidic chips with thousands of integrated micromechanical valves and control components. This technology is utilized in many areas of biology and chemistry and is a candidate to replace today's conventional automation paradigm, which consists of fluid-handling robots. We review the basic ...

The healthcare industry has developed a dependence on information technology (IT) for maintaining and improving both clinical and business operations. Whether IT is used for office automation or for reducing medical errors, there are five constants that routinely influence the successful integration of IT in healthcare. These constants are the ...

PURPOSE: A study was conducted to assess the effects and outcomes of implementing new technology into the medication-use process. METHODS: A pharmacy computer system, automated dispensing cabinets, and point-of-care products were implemented. The hypotheses of the study were that system errors in each phase of the medication-use process would decrease ...

The Emergency Room (ER) receives patients in critical conditions. The operation of many emergency service chains is hampered because the required medical equipment is not always conveniently available and patient vital signs are manually monitored, but not automatically tracked on a real-time basis. This has resulted in medical errors, increased ...

This paper describes the development and application of a medical pattern evaluation methodology. The ADAPT process aims to facilitate the increased use of data mining technologies in medicine by providing a method of translating the language of data mining outputs into that of the medical domain. The research behind this ...