Grid technologies have the potential to enable healthcare organizations to efficiently use powerful tools, applications and resources, many of which were so far inaccessible to them. This paper introduces a service-oriented architecture meant to Grid-enable several classes of computationally intensive medical applications for improved performance and cost-effective access to resources. ...

It is very clear from developments in technology and its global expansion that we cannot survive the 21st century with 20th century ethics. The developments in technology, especially those in the field of medicine have a direct and fast effect on human life expectation and survival. Thus, this issue has ...

This position paper advocates the necessity for promoting a Human Factors Engineering (HFE) approach to new clinical applications in the medical informatics domain. We first describe the negative consequences of NOT using HFE methods for such sensitive applications as medication Computerized Physicians Order Entry systems. We then describe rapidly the ...

Dermatologists have played a key role in the advancement and development of new safe, noninvasive technologies that are utilized in the treatment of both cosmetic telangiectasias and larger varicose veins of medical significance. As presented in this article, major advances in sclerosing solutions, hook avulsion techniques, and endovascular RF and ...

In this paper, we will discuss the proposal of an in-home medical monitoring and patient advisory services, the Knowledge and Informatics within home Medicine (KIM) project. The KIM project proposes to research remote patient monitoring through the use of medical sensors linked via the internet to medical clinics with the ...

This essay argues that medical innovation proceeds most efficiently and effectively within a free market economy. Medical innovation is an expression of the technological project: the program through which we seek to control nature, to improve the quality and quantity of life. The Technological Project proceeds most efficiently with a ...

Nanotechnologies represent an unprecedented recent advance that may revolutionize many areas of medicine and biology, including cancer diagnostics and treatment. Nanoparticle-based technologies have demonstrated especially high potential for medical purposes, ranging from diagnosing diseases to providing novel therapies. However, to be clinically relevant, the existing nanoparticle-based technologies must overcome several ...

Regenerative medical therapy has been expected to compensate for the therapeutic disadvantages of reconstructive surgery and organ transplantation, as well as offering a new therapeutic strategy. The objective of regenerative medical therapy is to induce the repair of defective tissues based on the natural healing potential of patients. For successful ...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard-MIT Divison of Health Sciences and Technology Program in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics, 1987.

The flushing and telangiectasias associated with rosacea are notoriously difficult to treat with standard medications. Newer technologies, namely medical lasers and light sources, have made it possible to control and improve erythematotelangietatic signs of rosacea. The potassium-titanyl-phosphate laser in particular is an efficacious and safe tool for treatment of this ...

This paper explores the online "pro-anorexia" underground, a movement that supports those with anorexia and adopts an "anti-recovery" perspective on the disease. While encouraging a "healthy" diet to sustain an anorexic way-of-life, the movement also recommends the radical use of weight-loss pharmaceuticals to pursue and maintain low body weight, in ...

As medical practice enters a new era with the exciting new applications of nanoscience and technology, the paper introduces the philosophy and the principles of controlled drug delivery and the generation of tissue. It further describes and discusses new research into nanoporous materials and how encapsulation of various medical substances ...

Medical (clinical) wastes are costly in disposal and carry risks of infection, or physical injury, and of exposure to potentially harmful pharmaceuticals, as well as being aesthetically unacceptable. Technological advances in disposal, together with the introduction of rigorous emission standards for incinerators and similarly stringent control standards for non-burn "alternate" ...

OBJECTIVE: Although the patient Internet portal is a potentially transformative technology, there is little scientific information about the demographic and clinical characteristics of portal enrollees and the features that they access. DESIGN: We describe two pilot studies of a comprehensive Internet portal called PatientSite. These pilots include a prospective one-year ...

NO-DO, the Spanish official newsreel produced by Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975), held a 30-year monopoly over audio-visual information in Spain from 1943 to 1975. This paper reports on an analysis of coverage of medical technologies by the Spanish Cinematic Newsreel Service, NO-DO, from 1943 to 1970. The study focuses on the ...

Titanium (Ti) provides the basis for many alloys used in medical technology. These alloys have been discussed many times in this column over the past decade. In recent years in particular, there have been a number of developments in Ti metallurgy, which suggests that a reappraisal of these alloy systems ...

Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) located in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, a state in Northern India, is a tertiary level referral academic medical center involved in teaching and training of super specialist medical professionals with 22 academic departments. It is the first tertiary care hospital in ...

In 1995, federal regulations required all academic medical centers to implement policies to manage individual financial conflict of interest. At the Mayo Clinic, all staff are salaried, and all medically related intellectual property from the staff belongs to the clinic. Hence, it was necessary to develop a policy for institutional ...

Horizon scanning is becoming particularly important in the medical industry, in the identification and evaluation of emerging technologies. This paper examines the role biomedical engineers may have in horizon scanning new medical technologies and considers whether this is a useful activity for biomedical engineers. A horizon scanning methodology for conducting ...

Molecular nanotechnology is a rapidly emerging field that will allow for the precise and purposeful arrangement of matter atom by atom and eventually the building of submicron-scale medical sensors and therapeutic devices. These tools will provide the means to analyze, understand, and precisely control the molecular machinery of the human ...

On the battlefield, a properly applied tourniquet can be an extremely effective means of controlling severe extremity wound hemorrhage. However, a great deal of confusion exists among soldiers, medics, and military medical officers on a number of tourniquet-related issues. What is an appropriate combat tourniquet? When is it appropriate to ...

The national focus on medication errors has stimulated rapid adoption of medication administration technologies with bar code verification. The effectiveness of these technologies in preventing errors is directly related to how consistently practitioners use the technology to verify both patient identity and drug identity with each administration. The authors discuss ...

1,3-Ketoesters and 1,3-diketones react with fluorine gas, using Durham multichannel modular microreactor technology, on a preparatively useful scale. High conversions and yields of monofluorinated products were obtained. A consideration of the mechanism of fluorination of dicarbonyl systems provides a rationale of the scope and limitations of the use of microreactor ...

The recent House of Lords decision in Quintavalle v Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has raised difficult and complex issues regarding the extent to which embryo selection and reproductive technology can be used as a means of rectifying genetic disorders and treating critically ill children. This comment outlines the facts ...

Medical services in Columbia are scarce in many regions, not only because of accessibility problems and costs, but also because of difficulties in access to medical knowledge. We envision a long-term strategy for virtual education programs, based upon communication technologies that could be developed by private and government institutions. The ...

Detection, validation and incorporation into clinical use of new diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic molecular targets in modern medical science should be time- and cost-efficient. Here, we discuss the principles, advantages, disadvantages and possible pitfalls of tissue microarray (TMA) technology, a powerful tool for high throughput large-scale morphological in situ analysis ...

With the availability of new technologies and the increased interest of medical practitioners to use molecular biomarkers in early detection and diagnosis, and in the prediction of therapeutic treatment efficacy and clinical outcomes, the academic and research institutions, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, have increased their efforts to develop ...

Intellectual property rights are essential in today's technology-driven age. A strong intellectual property protection strategy is crucial in the bioinformatics and biochips technology spaces as monetary and temporal resources are tremendous in finding a blockbuster drug or gene therapy, as well as in deploying advanced biosensor and other medical systems. ...

Medicare's role in the distribution of mobility-related assistive technology has not been well documented, yet rapid growth and regional variation in spending, and concerns over "in-the-home" coverage criteria, highlight the need for facts. Using the 2001 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, we find that 6.2 percent percent of beneficiaries obtained mobility ...

BACKGROUND: The advances in human endeavours have led to changes in technology. New words, neologisms, have been creeping up and are coined with astounding speed. While these terms are fascinating etymologically, their impact needs to be appreciated from a realistic perspective to keep one aware of the collateral changes we ...

Much progress has been made in the synthesis of polymers that emulate certain naturally occurring polymers and demonstrate exquisite sensitivity to environmental factors such as temperature, pH and mechanical stress. This article explains how these are finding use in medical technologies such as drug delivery and cell-sheet tissue engineering.

The author of this article offers an analysis of cardiac rehabilitation based on fieldwork conducted in two cardiac rehabilitation clinics. Disciplinary power is exercised through confessional, disciplinary, and surveillance technologies of cardiac rehabilitation. Through her analysis, the author shows how clients adhere to but also challenge agendas of rehabilitation. Transgressing, ...

New medical technologies that offer to improve upon or completely replace existing ones are continuously appearing. These technologies are forcing healthcare policymakers to consistently evaluate new treatment options. However, emerging medical technology has been viewed as a significant factor in increasing the cost of healthcare. The abundance of new medical ...

Tremendous progress of microelectronic technology observed within last 40 years is closely related to even more remarkable progress of technological tools. It is important to note however, that these new tools may be used for fabrication of diverse multifunctional structures as well. Such devices, called MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System) and MOEMS (Micro-Electro-Opto-Mechanical-System) ...

Zygote transfer is a significant limiting factor in pregnancy rates after Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) treatment. Adequate technique appraisal should be a high priority task for any medical facility that offers this treatment. Although many clinicians have extensive personal experience, it is difficult for trainees to understand the anatomical and ...

Enzyme based biosensors suffer from loss of activity and sensitivity through a variety of processes. One major reason for the loss is through large molecular weight proteins settling onto the sensor and affecting sensor signal stability and disrupting enzyme function. One way to minimize loss of sensor activity is to ...

At Southern Ohio Medical Center (SOMC), the medical imaging department and the radiologists expressed a strong desire to improve workflow. The improved workflow was a major motivating factor toward implementing a new RIS and speech recognition technology. The need to monitor workflow in a real-time fashion and to evaluate productivity ...

The rapid uptake of the hypodermic syringe as a medical technology by physicians in Europe and America since its introduction in the middle of the 19th century has led to a level of medical and public acceptance seldom reached by other therapeutic techniques. Presently, the developed world has clear guidelines ...

Historians have found it difficult to give a general account of the early medical use of X-rays in medicine. While the rays were hailed by some as a miracle technology, their early medical application was patchy, often remaining subsidiary to traditional methods of diagnosis and treatment, and was of disputed ...

Part 1 of this paper explored the origins of process activity mapping, one of the major tools currently being used to modernize patient pathways in the National Health Service in Great Britain. Within medical photography the current notion of modernization is inextricably linked to the development of digital technology. Whilst ...

Most deaths in the United States occur under the care of a physician. In most of these cases, decisions must be made about whether to initiate and continue or withdraw life-sustaining medical technology, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, ventilation, nutrition and hydration, dialysis, transfusions, and antibiotics. All are part of a ...

Innovation in medical science is progressing at a rapid pace. As a result, new medical technologies that offer to improve upon or completely replace existing alternatives are continually appearing. These technologies--which include pharmaceuticals, devices, equipment, supplies, medical and surgical procedures, and administrative and support systems--are changing the way medicine can ...

Thesis (M.A.)--Taipei Medical University Graduate Institute of Biomedical Technology

OBJECTIVES: This paper presents a survey on HealthGrid technologies, describing the current status of Grid and eHealth and analyzing them in the medium-term future. The objective is to analyze the key points, barriers and driving forces for the take-up of HealthGrids. METHODS: The article considers the procedures from other Grid ...

With the increasing performance of computer, the virtual instrument technology has greatly advanced over the years, and then virtual medical instrument technology becomes available. This paper presents the virtual medical instrument, and then as an example, an application of a signal acquisition, processing and analysis system using LabVIEW is also ...

An international survey was conducted in 2003 to assess the status of clinical engineering services delivered to hospitals in developing countries. Data was collected from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Mexico. The responses were compared to two previous studies done in industrialized countries. A model of medical technology acquisition and ...

The practice of medicine is a business of communications. Communications can be facilitated by technology. Healthcare providers organized in medical practices, hospitals, and nursing homes have tremendous needs to effectively communicate within their organizations and between their organizations. The focus on electronic medical records comes not only from the need ...

Advances in sensor technology have had a significant impact in medical research and practice in the last decade. However, within the hospital environment problems still exist where the application of sensing technology could provide the solution. The presence of antibiotic resistant bacteria within hospitals and the risk of serious infection ...

Powerful forces encourage the growth of medical technology (health benefits, private equity capital, public funding, pervasive academic research, consumer demand, specialist training, reimbursement mechanisms, and industry competition). Countervailing forces that inhibit growth are the costs of the technology, difficulty in evaluating clinical and cost effectiveness, unequal patient access, and misuse, ...

From my point of view, carotid artery stenting, in 2005, is clearly here to stay. "Houston, the Eagle has landed." The rest is up to you and me as we encourage our surgical colleagues and our various medical Societies to embrace this safe, effective, and durable technology and make it ...