A patient's trusting attitude towards technology used in their medical care may be a predictor of acceptance or rejection of the technology and, by extension, the physician. The aim of this study was to rigorously determine the validity of an instrument for measuring patients' trust in medical technology. Instrument validity ...

Cloud computing has gathered significant attention from information technology (IT) vendors in providing massively scalable applications as well as highly managed remote services. What is cloud computing and how will it impact the medical IT market? Will the next generation of picture archiving and communication systems be leveraging cloud technology?

Microrobots have the potential to revolutionize many aspects of medicine. These untethered, wirelessly controlled and powered devices will make existing therapeutic and diagnostic procedures less invasive and will enable new procedures never before possible. The aim of this review is threefold: first, to provide a comprehensive survey of the technological ...

New technologies are constantly being developed and introduced into medical practice. Their potential or actual use raises questions of efficacy and cost. All too often financial considerations of profit primarily determine whether a technology will be adopted. In an era in which the need to control costs has become clear, ...

The optimal choice of regulatory approach for securing patient safety is an important problem. In this review article, we show how insights from the field of regulatory studies can provide a conceptual apparatus for analysis of important problems in the regulation of medicine and healthcare. Design-based regulation operates through technical ...

BACKGROUND: Information technology improves outcomes (e.g., by reducing error), and universal implementation of electronic medical records throughout the United States is a national goal. Prior studies have shown low rates of implementation. OBJECTIVES: To assess the current state of acquisition and implementation of information technology tools in Massachusetts emergency departments ...

The Australian Health Technology Assessment Review has the potential to have a major effect on the availability of new medical technology and the listing of associated medical procedures on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Despite this, only about 15% of submissions to the Review came from "medical associations". Pharmaceutical and medical ...

Health care reform will greatly affect the medical technology industry in both positive and negative ways. Expanded coverage is a modest benefit that will increase demand for products. But the medical device excise tax authorized by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could have negative effects on research, profits, ...

Some of the measures that EFM personnel can take to further reduce their estates' carbon footprint at a time when pressure to cut energy consumption must be balanced both against the requirement to create the best possible patient environment, and new medical technology that may require substantial energy to operate, ...

Data sharing and information exchange among medical institutions is a requirement for convenient and effective data availability for both healthcare professionals and patients. In this paper, the characteristics of medical data are studied; two mainstream technologies of data storage for medical information are compared, and three strategies of medical documents ...

Electronic wireless sensors could cut medical costs by enabling physicians to remotely monitor vital signs such as blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood oxygenation while patients remain at home. According to the IDC report "Worldwide Bluetooth Semiconductor 2008-2012 Forecast," published November 2008, a forthcoming radio frequency communication ("wireless connectivity") standard, ...

The boundaries once faced by individuals with amputations are quickly being overcome through biotechnology. Although there are currently no prosthetics capable of replicating anatomic function, there have been radical advancements in prosthetic technology, medical science, and rehabilitation in the past 30 years, vastly improving functional mobility and quality of life ...

Background: In field medical operations, rapid diagnosis and triage of seriously injured patients is critical. With significant bulk and cost constraints placed on all equipment, it is important that any medical devices deployed in the field demonstrate high utility, durability, and ease of use. When medical ultrasound was first used ...

Currently, there is a disparity in the availability of doctors between urban and rural areas of developing countries. Most experienced doctors and specialists, as well as advanced diagnostic technologies, are available in urban areas. People living in rural areas have less or sometimes even no access to affordable healthcare facilities. ...

The delivery of combat casualty care poses numerous challenges including austere conditions, limited supplies and medical personnel, and multiple simultaneous patients. However, the exigent circumstances of the battlefield compel the development of research and the advancement of adaptive, practical medical technologies to support and sustain military health. In Operation Enduring ...

This EFOMP Policy Statement outlines the way in which a Safety and Quality Management System can be developed for Medical Physics Departments. The Policy Statement can help Medical Physicists to eliminate or at least minimize accidents or incidences due to improper use or application of medical technology on one hand ...

In a seminal article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Søren Holm and Tuja Takala analysed two protechnology arguments in bioethics: the hopeful principle and the automatic escalator. They showed how these arguments relate to problematic arguments such as the precautionary principle and the empirical slippery slope argument, and argued ...

This article explores various ways health personnel enact death in connection with mechanical ventilation treatment withdrawal in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Trondheim University Hospital. The main focus is on sedated terminal patients who undergo mechanical ventilator treatment withdrawal and relatives' presence at this time. Mol's (2002) praxiographic orientation ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine how medical specialists view health technology assessment (HTA) and its role in policy-making. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews with 28 medical specialists practising in Quebec and Ontario (Canada) to examine their views on an HTA report relevant to their specialty (prostate-specific antigen screening, electroconvulsive therapy and prenatal screening for ...

OBJECTIVES: The role of biomedical engineers (BMEs) has changed widely over the years, from managing a group of technicians to the planning of large installations and the management of medical technology countrywide. As the technology has advanced, the competence of BMEs has been challenged because it is no longer possible ...

ECRI Institute medical technology experts (i.e., biomedical engineers, patient safety experts, physicians, and research scientists) compiled a list of important technology-related issues that executives and clinical leaders at ambulatory care facilities should pay close attention to this year. The list presents several high-profile technologies in the context of the convergence ...

New technologies continue to affect the practice of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. Numerous financial and regulatory barriers must be overcome to develop an idea into a useful device or intervention. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval focuses on safety, often leaving the medical community, in general, to determine the ...

The sociology of emotion is rapidly evolving and has implications for medical settings. Advancing medical technologies create new contexts for decision-making and emotional reaction that are framed by "feeling rules." Feeling rules guide not only behavior, but also how one believes one should feel, thereby causing one to attempt to ...

Biomaterials have evolved over the past decade in response to the need for more sophisticated technologies for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. We consider here the ways in which biomaterials are changing and the consequences of this for medical technology.

Technology has great potential to reduce medication errors in hospitals. This case report describes barriers to, and facilitators of, the implementation of a pharmacy bar code scanning system to reduce medication dispensing errors at a large academic medical center. Ten pharmacy staff were interviewed about their experiences during the implementation. ...

The pathway that emerging medical technologies take to incorporation into routine medical care in the United States is a product of the social, economic, and political milieu. Our review explores how this milieu brought the incorporation of proton beam therapy into the healthcare delivery system to its current point. We ...

Ensuring quality medical education in all the medical colleges across India based on uniform curriculum prescribed by a regulatory body and maintaining a uniform standard are dependent on availability of an excellent infrastructure. Such infrastructure includes qualified teachers, knowledge resources, learning materials, and advanced education technology, which is a challenge ...

CONTEXT: Medication error prevention is a priority for the U.S. healthcare system in the 21st century. Use of technology is considered by some as critical to achieve this goal. Knowledge of the attitudinal barriers to such adoption, however, is limited. OBJECTIVE: To determine the attitudes of frontline prescriber clinicians towards ...

Technology assumes a key role in current clinical practice. A number of innovative or improved products are constantly being launched on the market and offered directly to the users (i.e., clinicians) or even to the patients. However, in most cases, the regulation for admission to commerce is slower than the ...

Telemedicine provides the opportunity to bring medical expertise to the bedside, even if the medical expert is not physically near the patient. Internet technology has facilitated telemedicine allowing for voice, video and other data to be exchanged between remote locations. To date, applications of telemedicine to anesthesia (Teleanesthesia) have been ...

The emerging and potential commercial applications of nanotechnologies clearly have great potential to significantly advance and even potentially revolutionize various aspects of medical practice and medical product development. Nanotechnology is already touching upon many aspects of medicine, including drug delivery, diagnostic imaging, clinical diagnostics, nanomedicines, and the use of nanomaterials ...

In the United States, inpatient medical care increasingly encompasses the use of expensive medical technology and, at the same time, is coordinated and supervised more and more by a rapidly growing number of inpatient-dedicated physicians (hospitalists). In the production of inpatient care services, Hospitalist services can be viewed as complementary ...

Military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan witnessed decreased numbers of soldiers killed in action and increased numbers of soldiers wounded in action. Medical personnel attribute these changes to use of improved body armor, rapid evacuation to medical treatment facilities, and use of medical technology. In recent years, medical technologist ...

In this age of information technology, physicians are confronted daily with the dilemma of how to deal with an excess of medical information. To do this efficiently and effectively, it is important to be aware of new technologies and their application. This article introduces emerging technologies, highlighting some of the ...

Medical applications have long provided an impetus for research in silicon-based microsystems. This paper explores micro-technologies that complement and extend conventional manufacturing approaches and applications. For example, lithographic microfabrication methods can be used to fabricate stents and integrated microsensors that can monitor lumen patency in cardiac and biliary applications. These ...

Medical outsourcing is the process in which a healthcare provider, spanning the provider continuum from individual physician to a health system, contracts with a third party located either domestically or internationally to provide medical services. The combination of ongoing radiologist shortages and technological developments has set the stage for an ...

As the military medical treatment facilities of Operation Iraqi Freedom have transitioned from make-shift tent facilities to more formal fixed facilities, the capability to deliver more complex care has markedly improved. Using case presentations, the authors illustrate the integration of advances in surgical technology in managing complex and devastating craniofacial ...

Two-dimensional (2D) videoconferencing has been explored widely in the past 15-20 years to support collaboration in healthcare. Two issues that arise in most evaluations of 2D videoconferencing in telemedicine are the difficulty obtaining optimal camera views and poor depth perception. To address these problems, we are exploring the use of ...

Integrating medical data at inter-centre level implies many challenges that are being tackled from many disciplines and technologies. Medical informatics have applied an important effort on describing and standardizing Electronic Health Records, and specially standardisation has achieved an important extent on Medical Imaging. Grid technologies have been extensively used to ...

This chapter describes the negative consequences of medical technology development and commercialization that is too slow, and makes the case for an immediate large scale investment in medical nanorobots to save 52 million lives a year. It also explains the essence of nanotechnology, its life-saving applications, the engineering challenges, and ...

The medication use process is one of the most complex and risky clinical care processes in the hospital. It involves a large number of caregivers in widely diverse areas: physicians, nurses, pharmacists and respiratory therapists. Studies performed over the past several years have shown that medication errors and adverse events ...

The main problem for health professionals and patients in accessing information is that this information is very often distributed over many medical records and locations. This problem is particularly acute in cancerology because patients may be treated for many years and undergo a variety of examinations. Recent advances in technology ...

Barrett's esophagus is an important step in the pathway to esophageal adenocarcinoma. Since most patients with Barrett's esophagus are undiagnosed and patients present with advanced adenocarcinoma de novo, prognosis for this disease remains poor. To identify those people with Barrett's esophagus who are at particular risk many new technologies are ...

Physicists have and continue to play a major role in the creation and introduction of novel technology into medical care. This review covers some of the highlights of contributions of medical physicists to the field of radiation oncology during the history of the AAPM. While not comprehensive, the broad scope ...

Levels of public and private funding for anesthesia services and health research reflect their value to the patient, the payor, and society. Improvements in anesthesia depend heavily on technologic advances. This article presents practical realistic assessment of medical innovation and barriers to its commercialization. Innovation by either academia or industry ...

The focus on the use of existing and new technologies to facilitate advances in medical imaging and medical informatics (MIMI) is often directed to the technical capabilities and possibilities that these technologies bring. The technologies, though, in acting as a mediating agent alter the dynamics and context of information delivery ...

There is a very clear need for the expanded application of information technology (IT) in healthcare. Clinical workflow still depends largely on manual, paper-based medical record systems in an activity that is economically inefficient and produces significant variances in medical outcomes. IT spend currently represents around 1.3% of total healthcare ...

In recent years the realization that the concept 'one drug fits all' - does not work, created the need to shift gears from 'treating the disease' to 'treating the patient', and implementation of 'Personalized Medicine' where treatment is tailored to the individual. In chronic and progressive diseases, such as Multiple ...

This Essay exposes and analyzes a hitherto overlooked cost of tort law: its adverse effect on innovation. Tort liability for negligence, defective products, and medical malpractice is determined by reference to custom. We demonstrate that courts' reliance on custom and conventional technologies as the benchmark of liability chills innovation and ...

Medicare payment is often cited as a major driver of medical technology diffusion. Stakeholders claimed that beneficiaries would be denied access to stents because Medicare payment did not initially cover the cost of stents. Nevertheless, stents diffused rapidly, including to untested indications. Outcomes with stents improved over time, primarily because ...