The promise and prospects for mobile technologies in healthcare service delivery-particularly as experienced by patients and other users-are the focus of this forward-looking volume. Its detailed sociotechnical perspective takes in factors influencing patient and provider adoption of technological advances, in addition to the well-known cost and accessibility advantages. Enlightening reports show mobile health technologies in multiple contexts as an impetus for behavioral change, a means of monitoring health changes, a growing trend in service delivery, and an emerging health frontier worldwide. Together, these chapters point to the continued expansion-and global reach-of mobile technology in the next stage of healthcare services. Included in the coverage: Behavior change techniques used in mobile applications targeting physical activity: a systematic review Mobile health integration in pregnancy Unintended users, uses, and consequences of mobile weight loss apps: using eating disorders as a case study Intention vs. perception: understanding the differences in physicians' attitudes towards mobile health applications HealthGuide: a personalized mobile patient guidance system Adoption of sensors in mobile health Current and Emerging mHealth Technologies is salient reading for researchers interested in mobile health development and implementation as well as technology adoption, and mobile health system developers and managers who are interested in the implications of mobile health use by patients and/or healthcare professionals. It can also be used for courses in technology adoption and health technologies.

This book explores potentially disruptive and transformative healthcare-specific use cases made possible by the latest developments in Internet of Things (IoT) technology and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Healthcare data can be subjected to a range of different investigations in order to extract highly useful and usable intelligence for the automation of traditionally manual tasks. In addition, next-generation healthcare applications can be enhanced by integrating the latest knowledge discovery and dissemination tools. These sophisticated, smart healthcare applications are possible thanks to a growing ecosystem of healthcare sensors and actuators, new ad hoc and application-specific sensor and actuator networks, and advances in data capture, processing, storage, and mining. Such applications also take advantage of state-of-the-art machine and deep learning algorithms, major strides in artificial and ambient intelligence, and rapid improvements in the stability and maturity of mobile, social, and edge computing models.

From bandage to the bioreactor, this book looks at five different device technologies from inception to healthcare practice, drawing on medical sociology, science and technology studies and political science. It examines "evidence," regulation and governance processes, and diverse stakeholders in innovating the technologies that shape health care.

In this book, leading authors in the field discuss developments of Ambient Assisted Living. The contributions have been chosen and invited at the 8th AAL Congress, Frankfurt/M. The meeting presents new technological developments which support the autonomy and independence of individuals with special needs. The 8th AAL Congress focusses its attention on technical assistance systems and their applications in homecare, health and care.

This book highlights the responsibility of medical device designers and engineers to eliminate sites of failure and to test devices to demonstrate their ultimate safety and efficacy. It also evaluates biomaterials and their properties as related to the design and reliability of medical devices. The principles that are described are readily applicable to the biomaterial scaffolds used for generating tissue-engineered constructs.

The term "muscular dystrophy" (MD) describes a group of primary genetic disorders of muscle that often have a distinctive and recognizable clinical p- notype, accompanied by characteristic, but frequently not pathognomonic, pathological features. Research into the molecular basis of the MDs by a c- bination of positional cloning and candidate gene analysis has provided the basis for a reclassification of these disorders, with genetic and protein data augmenting traditional clinically based nomenclature. These findings have brought insights into the molecular pathogenesis of MD, with an increasing number of potential pathways involved in arriving at a dystrophic phenotype. Some common themes can be recognized, however, including the involvement of five members of the dystrophin-associated complex (dystrophin and four sarcoglycans) in different types of MD, and the involvement of two nuclear envelope proteins in producing an Emery-Dreifuss MD phenotype. Other d- ease-associated genes appear to cause MD in a completely unrelated way, such as the involvement of calpain 3 in a form of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy. Section 1 of Muscular Dystrophy: Methods and Protocols reviews tra- tional strategies used to identify MDs. Meantime, techniques developed as a result of the research strategies described previously have become an integral part of the management of many patients with MD and their families, and these techniques are addressed in Sections 2 (DNA-based tests) and 3 (p- tein-based analyses). The continued effort to translate this enhanced und- standing into a molecular cure or treatment for MD is reviewed in Section 4.

Recent years have seen an upsurge of significant interest in cell-based technologies. A range of productive and lively debate have taken place relating to tissue engineering, namely the construction of tissues and whole organs using molecularly-designed resorbable biomaterials to create tissue de novo, the potential use of human embryonic stem cells for transplantation and regenerative medicine, with similar potential for adult-derived stem cells, and gene therapy, in relation to cell transplantation. New findings in biomimetic materials, cell signalling pathways, extracellular matrix receptors and ligands, growth factors, and the human genome project, all present particularly motivating sources for the development of research in the evergrowing biomedical field. The purpose of this book is to stimulate further the work in biomedicine and to make the issues of related scientific disciplines accessible to a wider readership by characterising the current state of research in the biomedical field. The lectures and a selection of the presentations from BlOMED 200- th The 9 International Symposium on Biomedical Science and Technology, held in September 2002 in Turkey- constitute the basis for the volume. Tissue engineering, stem cells, cell and gene therapies were the major topics presented and discussed in the symposium. This book is intended to serve as an up-to-date synopsis of the major developments of our area through the work reflected in BlOMED 2002, though not covering all aspects of the topics, due to the natural restrictions within a volume of this kind.

Phototherapy exemplifies scientific medicine. The major advances have resulted from effective collaborations between basic researchers and clinicians. This book is directed to clinicians and basic researchers who are interested in current and emerging implementations of phototherapy. It can serve as an introductory reference and a textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in medical physics and biomedical engineering. The emphasis is on the science underlying the various phototherapy procedures, which encompasses aspects of classical and molecular photophysics, biological photochemistry, photobiology and biophotonics. Topics that do not usually appear in other general sources include the theory and applications of tissue optics, Monte Carlo simulation, light dosimetry, and analytical modeling of laser surgery. Many illustrative problems with answers are provided to exemplify the more quantitative aspects of each topic.

The generation of tridimensional tissues, assembled from scaffolding materials populated with biologically functional cells, is the great challenge and hope of tissue bioengineering and regenerative medicine. The generation of biomaterials capable of harnessing the immune system has been particularly successful. This book provides a comprehensive view of how immune cells can be manipulated to suppresses inflammation, deliver vaccines, fight cancer cells, promote tissue regeneration or inhibit blood clotting and bacterial infections by functionally engineered biomaterials. However, long-lived polymers, such as those employed in orthopedic surgery or vascular stents, can often induce an immune reaction to their basic components. As a result, this book is also an important step towards coming to understand how to manipulate biomaterials to optimize their beneficial effects and downplay detrimental immune responses.

Medical Informatics and biomedical computing have grown in quantum measure over the past decade. An abundance of advances have come to the foreground in this field with the vast amounts of biomedical and genomic data, the Internet, and the wide application of computer use in all aspects of medical, biological, and health care research and practice. MEDICAL INFORMATICS: Knowledge Management and Data Mining in Biomedicine covers the basic foundations of the area while extending the foundational material to include the recent leading-edge research in the field. The newer concepts, techniques, and practices of biomedical knowledge management and data mining are introduced and examined in detail. It is the research and applications in these areas that are raising the technical horizons and expanding the utility of informatics to an increasing number of biomedical professionals and researchers.

The book is divided into three major topical sections.

Section I presents the foundational information and knowledge management material and includes topics such as: bioinformatics challenges and standards, security and privacy, ethical and social issues, and biomedical knowledge mapping.

Section II discusses the topics which are relevant to knowledge representations & access and includes topics such as: representations of medical concepts and relationships, genomic information retrieval, 3D medical informatics, public access to anatomic images, and creating and maintaining biomedical ontologies.

Section III examines the emerging application research in data mining, biomedical textual mining, and knowledge discovery research and includes topics such as: semantic parsing and analysisfor patient records, biological relationships, gene pathways, and metabolic networks, exploratory genomic data analysis, joint learning using data and text mining, and disease informatics and outbreak detection.

The book is a comprehensive presentation of the foundations and leading application research in medical informatics/biomedicine. These concepts and techniques are illustrated with detailed case studies.

The authors are widely recognized professors and researchers in Schools of Medicine and Information Systems from the University of Arizona, University of Washington, Columbia University, and Oregon Health & Science University. In addition, individual expert contributing authors have been commissioned to write chapters for the book on their respective topical expertise.

Dr. Myrtle A. Davis has assembled a panel of cutting-edge scientists to describe their best methods for detecting, illuminating, and quantifying apoptotic mechanisms in a way that is useful for the design of toxicology and pharmacology studies. These state-of-the-art techniques include flow cytometric, fluorometric, and laser scanning methods for quantifying and characterizing apoptosis, as well as protocols for the use of DNA microarray technology, high throughput screens, and ELISA. Immunocytochemical methods for measuring biochemical and molecular endpoints in tissue sections will be highly useful for those carrying out studies in whole animal models as opposed to cell culture systems.

Computational Intelligence is comparatively a new field but it has made a tremendous progress in virtually every discipline right from engineering, science, business, m- agement, aviation to healthcare. Computational intelligence already has a solid track-record of applications to healthcare, of which this book is a continuation. We would like to refer the reader to the excellent previous volumes in this series on computational intelligence in heal- care [1-3]. This book is aimed at providing the most recent advances and state of the art in the practical applications of computational intelligence paradigms in healthcare. It - cludes nineteen chapters on using various computational intelligence methods in healthcare such as intelligent agents and case-based reasoning. A number of fielded applications and case studies are presented. Highlighted are in particular novel c- putational approaches to the semantic management of health information such as in the Web 2.0, mobile agents such as in portable devices, learning agents capable of adapting to diverse clinical settings through case-based reasoning, and statistical - proaches in computational intelligence. This book is targeted towards scientists, application engineers, professors, health professionals, professors, and students. Background information on computational intelligence has been provided whenever necessary to facilitate the comprehension of a broad audience including healthcare practitioners.

This book explores various applications of deep learning to the diagnosis of cancer,while also outlining the future face of deep learning-assisted cancer diagnostics. As is commonly known, artificial intelligence has paved the way for countless new solutions in the field of medicine. In this context, deep learning is a recent and remarkable sub-field, which can effectively cope with huge amounts of data and deliver more accurate results. As a vital research area, medical diagnosis is among those in which deep learning-oriented solutions are often employed. Accordingly, the objective of this book is to highlight recent advanced applications of deep learning for diagnosing different types of cancer. The target audience includes scientists, experts, MSc and PhD students, postdocs, and anyone interested in the subjects discussed. The book can be used as a reference work to support courses on artificial intelligence, medical and biomedicaleducation.

This book focuses on the development and use of interoperability standards related to healthcare information technology (HIT) and provides in-depth discussion of the associated essential aspects. The book explains the principles of conformance, examining how to improve the content of healthcare data exchange standards (including HL7 v2.x, V3/CDA, FHIR, CTS2, DICOM, EDIFACT, and ebXML), the rigor of conformance testing, and the interoperability capabilities of healthcare applications for the benefit of healthcare professionals who use HIT, developers of HIT applications, and healthcare consumers who aspire to be recipients of safe and effective health services facilitated through meaningful use of well-designed HIT. Readers will understand the common terms interoperability, conformance, compliance and compatibility, and be prepared to design and implement their own complex interoperable healthcare information system. Chapters address the practical aspects of the subject matter to enable application of previously theoretical concepts. The book provides real-world, concrete examples to explain how to apply the information, and includes many diagrams to illustrate relationships of entities and concepts described in the text. Designed for professionals and practitioners, this book is appropriate for implementers and developers of HIT, technical staff of information technology vendors participating in the development of standards and profiling initiatives, informatics professionals who design conformance testing tools, staff of information technology departments in healthcare institutions, and experts involved in standards development. Healthcare providers and leadership of provider organizations seeking a better understanding of conformance, interoperability, and IT certification processes will benefit from this book, as will students studying healthcare information technology.

This book introduces approaches that have the potential to transform the daily practice of psychiatrists and psychologists. This includes the asynchronous communication between mental health care providers and clients as well as the automation of assessment and therapy.

Speech and language are particularly interesting from the viewpoint of psychological assessment. For instance, depression may change the characteristics of voice in individuals and these changes can be detected by a special form of speech analysis. Computational screening methods that utilize speech and language can detect subtle changes and alert clinicians as well as individuals and caregivers.

The use of online technologies in mental health, however, poses ethical problems that will occupy concerned individuals, governments and the wider public for some time. Assuming that these ethical problems can be solved, it should be possible to diagnose and treat mental health disorders online (excluding the use of medication).

Speech and language are particularly interesting from the viewpoint of psychological assessment. For instance, depression may change the characteristics of voice in individuals and these changes can be detected by a special form of speech analysis. Computational screening methods that utilize speech and language can detect subtle changes and alert clinicians as well as individuals and caregivers.

The use of online technologies in mental health, however, poses ethical problems that will occupy concerned individuals, governments and the wider public for some time. Assuming that these ethical problems can be solved, it should be possible to diagnose and treat mental health disorders online (excluding the use of medication).

Probabilistic Modelling in Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics has been written for researchers and students in statistics, machine learning, and the biological sciences. The first part of this book provides a self-contained introduction to the methodology of Bayesian networks. The following parts demonstrate how these methods are applied in bioinformatics and medical informatics. All three fields - the methodology of probabilistic modeling, bioinformatics, and medical informatics - are evolving very quickly. The text should therefore be seen as an introduction, offering both elementary tutorials as well as more advanced applications and case studies.

Current demographic, economic and social conditions which developed countries are faced with require a paradigm change for delivering high quality and efficient health services. In that context, healthcare systems have to turn from organization-centered to process-oriented and finally towards individualized patient care, also called personal care, based on ehealth platform services. Interoperability requirements for ubiquitous personalized health services reach beyond current concepts of health information integration among professional stakeholders and related Electronic Patient Records.Future personal health platforms particularly have to maintain semantic interoperability among systems using different modalities and technologies, different knowledge representation and domain experts' languages as well as different coding schemes and terminologies to include home care, as well as personal and mobile systems. This development is not restricted to regions or countries, but appears globally, requiring a comprehensive international collaboration. This publication within the series "Studies in Health Technology and Informatics" presents papers from leading international experts representing all domains involved in ehealth.

This text examines in detail mathematical and physical modeling, computational methods and systems for obtaining and analyzing biological structures, using pioneering research cases as examples. As such, it emphasizes programming and problem-solving skills. It provides information on structure bioinformatics at various levels, with individual chapters covering introductory to advanced aspects, from fundamental methods and guidelines on acquiring and analyzing genomics and proteomics sequences, the structures of protein, DNA and RNA, to the basics of physical simulations and methods for conformation searches. This book will be of immense value to researchers and students in the fields of bioinformatics, computational biology and chemistry. Dr. Dongqing Wei is a Professor at the Department of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, College of Life Science and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China. His research interest is in the general area of structural bioinformatics.

This comprehensive book focuses on better big-data security for healthcare organizations. Following an extensive introduction to the Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare including challenging topics and scenarios, it offers an in-depth analysis of medical body area networks with the 5th generation of IoT communication technology along with its nanotechnology. It also describes a novel strategic framework and computationally intelligent model to measure possible security vulnerabilities in the context of e-health. Moreover, the book addresses healthcare systems that handle large volumes of data driven by patients' records and health/personal information, including big-data-based knowledge management systems to support clinical decisions. Several of the issues faced in storing/processing big data are presented along with the available tools, technologies and algorithms to deal with those problems as well as a case study in healthcare analytics. Addressing trust, privacy, and security issues as well as the IoT and big-data challenges, the book highlights the advances in the field to guide engineers developing different IoT devices and evaluating the performance of different IoT techniques. Additionally, it explores the impact of such technologies on public, private, community, and hybrid scenarios in healthcare. This book offers professionals, scientists and engineers the latest technologies, techniques, and strategies for IoT and big data.

Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research (CPFR) provides a forum for the very latest in family research; examining family structures, behaviours, and relationships from a variety of theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary viewpoints. Published annually, each volume focuses upon a 'hot topic' at the leading edge of family research, providing in-depth coverage from expert authors. Previous volumes have covered issues such as economic stress, family relations in the 21st Century, and parent-child relations in later life. Each annual volume recognizes the mainstream of family research topics and provides detailed investigations within those topics. In addition, each annual volume honours the internationalization of family research, and provides perspectives on each topic from a truly cross-cultural point of view.

This book presents 3D3C platforms - three-dimensional systems for community, creation and commerce. It discusses tools including bots in social networks, team creativity, privacy, and virtual currencies & micropayments as well as their applications in areas like healthcare, energy, collaboration, and art. More than 20 authors from 10 countries share their experiences, research fi ndings and perspectives, off ering a comprehensive resource on the emerging fi eld of 3D3C worlds. The book is designed for both the novice and the expert as a way to unleash the emerging opportunities in 3D3C worlds. This Handbook maps with breadth and insight the exciting frontier of building virtual worlds with digital technologies. David Perkins, Research Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education This book is from one of the most adventurous and energetic persons I have ever met. Yesha takes us into new undiscovered spaces and provides insight into phenomena of social interaction and immersive experiences that transform our lives. Cees de Bont, Dean of School of Design & Chair Professor of Design, School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University When you read 3D3C Platforms you realize what a domain like ours -- 3D printing -- can and should do for the world. Clearly we are just starting. Inspiring.David Reis, CEO, Stratasys Ltd This book provides a stunning overview regarding how virtual worlds are reshaping possibilities for identity and community. Th e range of topics addressed by the authors- from privacy and taxation to fashion and health care-provide a powerful roadmap for addressing the emerging potential of these online environments. Tom Boellstorff , Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine Handbook on 3D3C Platforms amassed a unique collection of multidisciplinary academic thinking. A primer on innovations that will touch every aspect of the human community in the 21st century. Eli Talmor, Professor, London Business School