Interest in Information and Communication Technologies for human monitoring, smart health and assisted living is growing due to the significant impact that these technologies are expected to have on improving the quality of life of ageing populations around the world. This book brings together chapters written by a range of researchers working in these topics, providing an overview of the areas and covering current research, developments and applications for a readership of researchers and research-led engineering practitioners. It discusses the promises and the possible advantages of these technologies, and also indicates the challenges for the future. Topics covered include: personal monitoring and health data acquisition in smart homes; contactless monitoring of respiratory activity; technology-based assistance of people with dementia; wearable sensors for gesture analysis; design and prototyping of home automation systems for the monitoring of elderly people; multi-sensor platform for circadian rhythm analysis; smart multi-sensor solutions for activity detection; human monitoring based on heterogeneous sensor networks; mobile health for vital signs and gait monitoring systems; and smartphone-based blood pressure monitoring for falls risk assessment.

The Handbook of Research on Informatics in Healthcare and Biomedicine is the single authoritative reference source for information on the newest trends and breakthroughs in computer applications applied to healthcare and biomedicine. Innovative technologies in health information systems, medicine, health services, and other areas in biomedicine are explored. The comprehensive chapters contained in this handbook of research have been written by 99 international experts from the field of healthcare and IT. More than 900 references to existing publications and a wide-ranging compendium of over 450 key terms and definitions have been included to provide readers with the ultimate research tool.

The new edition of this practical text presents a clear anatomic approach to locating the needle insertion site for EMG. Succinct descriptions are provided for 71 routinely tested muscles, and each is accompanied by a full-page drawing of the muscle and related anatomy. Many new cross-sectional drawings have been added to further delineate the anatomy. Guidelines have been expanded throughout to include more detail. There are also more pearls, additional tips on avoiding pitfalls, and anatomical and clinical descriptions. Teaching points have been expanded and replace the previous "notes" from the first edition. The text is in outline format and indicates peripheral and nerve root innervations and patient positioning.

Aging, Health and Technology takes a problem-centered approach to examine how older adults use technology for health. It examines the many ways in which technology is being used by older adults, focusing on challenges, solutions and perspectives of the older user. Using aging-health technology as a lens, the book examines issues of technology adoption, basic human factors, cognitive aging, mental health, aging and usability, privacy, trust and automation. Each chapter takes a case study approach to summarize lessons learned from unique examples that can be applied to similar projects, while also providing general information about older adults and technology.

Biomedical Texture Analysis: Fundamentals, Applications, Tools and Challenges describes the fundamentals and applications of biomedical texture analysis (BTA) for precision medicine. It defines what biomedical textures (BTs) are and why they require specific image analysis design approaches when compared to more classical computer vision applications. The fundamental properties of BTs are given to highlight key aspects of texture operator design, providing a foundation for biomedical engineers to build the next generation of biomedical texture operators. Examples of novel texture operators are described and their ability to characterize BTs are demonstrated in a variety of applications in radiology and digital histopathology. Recent open-source software frameworks which enable the extraction, exploration and analysis of 2D and 3D texture-based imaging biomarkers are also presented. This book provides a thorough background on texture analysis for graduate students and biomedical engineers from both industry and academia who have basic image processing knowledge. Medical doctors and biologists with no background in image processing will also find available methods and software tools for analyzing textures in medical images.

The healthcare industry is starting to adopt digital twins to improve personalized medicine, healthcare organization performance, and new medicine and devices. These digital twins can create useful models based on information from wearable devices, omics, and patient records to connect the dots across processes that span patients, doctors, and healthcare organizations as well as drug and device manufacturers. Digital twins are digital representations of human physiology built on computer models. The use of digital twins in healthcare is revolutionizing clinical processes and hospital management by enhancing medical care with digital tracking and advancing modelling of the human body. These tools are of great help to researchers in studying diseases, new drugs, and medical devices. Digital Twins and Healthcare: Trends, Techniques, and Challenges facilitates the advancement and knowledge dissemination in methodologies and applications of digital twins in the healthcare and medicine fields. This book raises interest and awareness of the uses of digital twins in healthcare in the research community. Covering topics such as deep neural network, edge computing, and transfer learning method, this premier reference source is an essential resource for hospital administrators, pharmacists, medical professionals, IT consultants, students and educators of higher education, librarians, and researchers.

Microdialysis is currently one of the most important in vivo sampling methods in physiology and pharmacology. It is used to determine the chemical components of the fluid in the extracellular space of tissues. The technique is now well established in neuroscience research and is used excessively in behavioral neuroscience to determine the concentrations and identities of molecules in brain tissues, and their change due to behavior, hormonal and transmitter changes in the nervous system. The book provides a detailed comprehensive overview of the technology and its applications, including application in pathology, drug development, and the application in the clinic. The authors are all well known researchers in Neuroscience and experts in the use of Microdialysis.
Organized into two parts of seven sections, the Handbook of Microdialysis critically examines recent developments in the field through a variety of chapters written by an internationally acclaimed group of authors. It is the first comprehensive handbook covering the technology of Microdialysis and its applications in Neuroscience.
* Presents microdialysis methods and interpretation including the technical aspects of microdialysis as a sampling technique followed by the analytical chemical methods
* Discusses the role of microdialysis in pharmacology, drug development and models of CNS
pathology
* Includes clinical applications of microdialysis

This unifying volume offers a clear theoretical framework for the research shaping the emerging direction of informatics in health care. Contributors ground the reader in the basics of informatics methodology and design, including creating salient research questions, and explore the human dimensions of informatics in studies detailing how patients perceive, respond to, and use health data. Real-world examples bridge the theoretical and the practical as knowledge management-based solutions are applied to pervasive issues in information technologies and service delivery. Together, these articles illustrate the scope of health possibilities for informatics, from patient care management to hospital administration, from improving patient satisfaction to expanding the parameters of practice. Highlights of the coverage:* Design science research opportunities in health care * IS/IT governance in health care: an integrative model * Persuasive technologies and behavior modification through technology: design of a mobile application for behavior change * The development of a hospital secure messaging and communication platform: a conceptualization * The development of intelligent patient-centric systems for health care * An investigation on integrating Eastern and Western medicine with informatics Interest in Theories to Inform Superior Health Informatics Research and Practice cuts across academia and the healthcare industry. Its audience includes healthcare professionals, physicians and other clinicians, practicing informaticians, hospital administrators, IT departments, managers, and management consultants, as well as scholars, researchers, and students in health informatics and public health.

This book is specifically designed to serve the community of postgraduates and researchers in the fields of epidemiology, health GIS, medical geography, and health management. It starts with the basic concepts and role of remote sensing, GIS in Kala-azar diseases. The book gives an exhaustive coverage of Satellite data, GPS, GIS, spatial and attribute data modeling, and geospatial analysis of Kala-azar diseases. It also presents the modern trends of remote sensing and GIS in health risk assessment with an illustrated discussion on its numerous applications.

This book provides a pioneering approach to modeling the human diabetic patient using a software agent. It is based on two MASc (Master of Applied Science) theses: one looking at the evolution of the patient agent in time, and another looking the interaction of the patient agent with the healthcare system. It shows that the software agent evolves in a manner analogous to the human patient and exhibits typical attributes of the illness such as reacting to food consumption, medications, and activity. This agent model can be used in a number of different ways, including as a prototype for a specific human patient with the purpose of helping to identify when that patient's condition deviates from normal variations. The software agent can also be used to study the interaction between the human patient and the health care system. This book is of interest to anyone involved in the management of diabetic patients or in societal research into the management of diabetes. The diabetic patient agent was developed using the Ackerman model for diabetes, but this model can be easily adapted for any other model subject with the necessary physiological data to support that model.

Membrane processes today play a signifi cant role in the replacement therapy for acute and chronic organ failure diseases. Current extracorporeal blood purifi cation and oxygenation devices employ membranes acting as selective barriers for the removal of endogeneous and exogeneous toxins and for gas exchange, respectively. Additionally, membrane technology offers new interesting opportunities for the design of bioartificial livers, pancreas, kidneys, lungs etc. This book reviews the latest developments in membrane systems for bioartificial organs and regenerative medicine, investigates how membrane technology can improve the quality and efficiency of biomedical devices, and highlights the design procedures for membrane materials covering the preparation, characterization, and sterilization steps as well as transport phenomena. The different strategies pursued for the development of membrane bioartifi cial organs, including crucial issues related to blood/cell-membrane interactions are described with the aim of opening new and exciting frontiers in the coming decades. The book is a valuable tool for tissue engineers, clinicians, biomaterials scientists, membranologists as well as biologists and biotechnologists. It is also a source of reference for students, academic and industrial researchers in the topic of biotechnology, biomedical engineering, materials science and medicine.

This book focuses on the state-of-the-art of biosensor research and development for specialists and non-specialists. It introduces the fundamentals of the subject with relevant characteristics of transducer elements, as well as biochemical recognition molecules. This book is ideal for researchers of nanotechnology, materials science and biophysics.

A thought-provoking series that chronicles the discussions, disputes, and debates that have divided scientists and advanced science through the ages. The origins of humanity? The causes of homosexuality? Experimentation on humans and animals? In both theory and practice, science is riven by controversy. Always has been, always will be. Controversies in Science reveals the history of humanity's disputatious pursuit of truth-the passions, the polemics, and the partisanship. ABC-CLIO's Controversies in Science series examines some of the greatest debates in the history of science's quest for truth. Edited by top scientists, philosophers, and historians, the titles explore fields as diverse as cosmology, genetics, evolution, psychiatry, and the fascinating and speculative study of extraterrestrial biology. Who are we? Where do we come from? And what limits should we place on the pursuit of answers to these questions? The truth is out there. But what routes have we taken? What routes should we take? Controversies in Science offers a road map.

This book presents the theoretical foundations of Systems Biology, as well as its application in studies on human hosts, pathogens and associated diseases. This book presents several chapters written by renowned experts in the field. Some topics discussed in depth in this book include: computational modeling of multiresistant bacteria, systems biology of cancer, systems immunology, networks in systems biology.

Medical decision support systems (MDSS) are computer-based programs that analyse data within a patient's healthcare records to provide questions, prompts, or reminders to assist clinicians at the point of care. Inputting a patient's data, symptoms, or current treatment regimens into an MDSS, clinicians are assisted with the identification or elimination of the most likely potential medical causes, which can enable faster discovery of a set of appropriate diagnoses or treatment plans. Explainable AI (XAI) is a "white box" model of artificial intelligence in which the results of the solution can be understood by the users, who can see an estimate of the weighted importance of each feature on the model's predictions, and understand how the different features interact to arrive at a specific decision. This book discusses XAI-based analytics for patient-specific MDSS as well as related security and privacy issues associated with processing patient data. It provides insights into real-world scenarios of the deployment, application, management, and associated benefits of XAI in MDSS. The book outlines the frameworks for MDSS and explores the applicability, prospects, and legal implications of XAI for MDSS. Applications of XAI in MDSS such as XAI for robot-assisted surgeries, medical image segmentation, cancer diagnostics, and diabetes mellitus and heart disease prediction are explored.

Regular developments in technology continue to influence the medical and healthcare fields as they interact with information and computer sciences by methods of acquisition and the storage and retrieval of information. Methods, Models, and Computation for Medical Informatics is a comprehensive collection of research on computational capabilities, prototypes, and algorithms, as well as application in the areas of nursing, clinical care, public health, biomedical research, and much more. This book provides a better understanding of the models and methods used in the field of medicine for researchers, practitioners, and medical professionals alike.

Global Health Informatics: How Information Technology Can Change Our Lives in a Globalized World discusses the critical role of information and communication technologies in health practice, health systems management and research in increasingly interconnected societies. In a global interconnected world the old standalone institutional information systems have proved to be inadequate for patient-centered care provided by multiple providers, for the early detection and response to emerging and re-emerging diseases, and to guide population-oriented public health interventions. The book reviews pertinent aspects and successful current experiences related to standards for health information systems; digital systems as a support for decision making, diagnosis and therapy; professional and client education and training; health systems operation; and intergovernmental collaboration.

The application of nanotechnology within the medical sphere has had a significant influence on how diseases and conditions are treated and diagnosed. While many strides have been made, there is still continuous research on nanotechnology being performed in the field. Advancing Medicine through Nanotechnology and Nanomechanics Applications highlights emergent trends and empirical research on technological innovations in medicine and healthcare. Investigating the impact of nanotechnology and nanomechanics on the treatment of diseases, regenerative medicine, and drug delivery systems, this publication is a vital reference source for professionals, researchers, medical students, and engineering students.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of different biomedical data types, including both clinical and genomic data. Thorough explanations enable readers to explore key topics ranging from electrocardiograms to Big Data health mining and EEG analysis techniques. Each chapter offers a summary of the field and a sample analysis. Also covered are telehealth infrastructure, healthcare information association rules, methods for mass spectrometry imaging, environmental biodiversity, and the global nonlinear fitness function for protein structures. Diseases are addressed in chapters on functional annotation of lncRNAs in human disease, metabolomics characterization of human diseases, disease risk factors using SNP data and Bayesian methods, and imaging informatics for diagnostic imaging marker selection. With the exploding accumulation of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), there is an urgent need for computer-aided analysis of heterogeneous biomedical datasets. Biomedical data is notorious for its diversified scales, dimensions, and volumes, and requires interdisciplinary technologies for visual illustration and digital characterization. Various computer programs and servers have been developed for these purposes by both theoreticians and engineers. This book is an essential reference for investigating the tools available for analyzing heterogeneous biomedical data. It is designed for professionals, researchers, and practitioners in biomedical engineering, diagnostics, medical electronics, and related industries.

This definitive source provides practicing professionals and students in the occupational, environmental, and public health and safety fields with the functional basics of biological monitoring. The author examines how environmental exposures to particular chemicals are related to concentrations of markers in body tissues and fluids. Biological Monitoring integrates the applied sciences of industrial/environmental hygiene, epidemiology, public health, occupational medicine, toxicology, biochemistry, and analytical chemistry with the basic sciences to interpret the connections between exposures and lifestyle/environmental influences, and their effects on humans. This comprehensive introduction provides dependable, detailed coverage of:

• monitoring for harmful substances in the workplace
• the benefits and limitations of testing for critical levels of toxic materials in bodily tissues and fluids
• state-of-the-art developments in biological monitoring
• a wide variety of toxic chemicals and selected physical agents
• immunoassays
• monitoring for HIV and AIDS
• importance of exposure routes
• the most up-to-date methods of health and medical surveillance
• the interpretation of adduct concentrations
• biological exposure indices
• biological monitoring of pesticides
• biological monitoring in the home and around hazardous waste sites
• and much more