This book highlights the latest advances on the implementation and adaptation of blockchain technologies in real-world scientific, biomedical, and data applications. It presents rapid advancements in life sciences research and development by applying the unique capabilities inherent in distributed ledger technologies. The book unveils the current uses of blockchain in drug discovery, drug and device tracking, real-world data collection, and increased patient engagement used to unlock opportunities to advance life sciences research. This paradigm shift is explored from the perspectives of pharmaceutical professionals, biotechnology start-ups, regulatory agencies, ethical review boards, and blockchain developers. This book enlightens readers about the opportunities to empower and enable data in life sciences.

One of the first applications of ultrasound was in submarine sonar equip ment. Since then ultrasound has found increasing applications, particularly in industry, but increasingly in biomedicine. For many years ultrasound has been used in physical therapy, although only in the past decade or two has it evolved from laboratory curiosity to a well-established diagnostic imaging modality. Ultrasound is now a widely accepted, indeed pervasive, diagnos tic and therapeutic tool in the medical field, and its applications are increasing rapidly. Our intent in developing this book is to provide a coherent tutorial intro duction to the field of medical ultrasound at a level suitable for those en tering the area from either medical or scientific backgrounds. The topics discussed should be of interest to nearly all medical and health care per sonnel needing to understand or operate ultrasonic devices, including clini cians, medical technicians, physiotherapists, medical physicists, and other biomedical scientists interested in the field. The book opens with a description of the basic principles of propagating acoustic waves, explains how they interact with a wide range of biological systems, and outlines the effects they produce. To provide practical infor mation to operators of ultrasound equipment, we have included thorough coverage of the details of ultrasonic instrumentation and measurement techniques, and set forth the framework for an effective quality assurance program."

The purpose of the Mental Health Practice in a Digital World: A Clinicians Guide book is to prepare clinicians to understand, critically evaluate, and embrace well-designed and validated technologies that have the potential of transforming the access, affordability, and accountability of mental healthcare. The reader will become aware of the practical applications of technology in mental health as well as research supporting information technology tools, policy debates. Each chapter contains either examples or scenarios that are relevant to the current practice of mental health care. Policy makers, application developers, scientists, and executives that have lead or supported the use of technologies in real world practice are chapter authors. The goal for this book is to be the key resource for current and future mental health clinicians in the U.S. and around the world to become familiar with technology innovations and how they impact and improve clinical practice.

Virtual Reality has the potential to provide descriptive and practical information for medical training and therapy while relieving the patient or the physician. Multimodal interactions between the user and the virtual environment facilitate the generation of high-fidelity sensory impressions, by using not only visual and auditory, but also kinesthetic, tactile, and even olfactory feedback modalities. On the basis of the existing physiological constraints, Virtual Reality in Medicine derives the technical requirements and design principles of multimodal input devices, displays, and rendering techniques. Resulting from a course taught by the authors, Virtual Reality in Medicine presents examples for surgical training, intra-operative augmentation, and rehabilitation that are already in use as well as those currently in development. It is well suited as introductory material for engineering and computer science students, as well as researchers who want to learn more about basic technologies in the area of virtual reality applied to medicine. It also provides a broad overview to non-engineering students as well as clinical users, who desire to learn more about the current state of the art and future applications of this technology.

Managing Medical Devices within a Regulatory Framework helps administrators, designers, manufacturers, clinical engineers, and biomedical support staff to navigate worldwide regulation, carefully consider the parameters for medical equipment patient safety, anticipate problems with equipment, and efficiently manage medical device acquisition budgets throughout the total product life cycle. This contributed book contains perspectives from industry professionals and academics providing a comprehensive look at health technology management (HTM) best practices for medical records management, interoperability between and among devices outside of healthcare, and the dynamics of implementation of new devices. Various chapters advise on how to achieve patient confidentiality compliance for medical devices and their software, discuss legal issues surrounding device use in the hospital environment of care, the impact of device failures on patient safety, methods to advance skillsets for HTM professionals, and resources to assess digital technology. The authors bring forth relevant challenges and demonstrate how management can foster increased clinical and non-clinical collaboration to enhance patient outcomes and the bottom line by translating the regulatory impact on operational requirements.

This book provides an interdisciplinary look at emerging trends in signal processing and biomedicine found at the intersection of healthcare, engineering, and computer science. It examines the vital role signal processing plays in enabling a new generation of technology based on big data, and looks at applications ranging from medical electronics to data mining of electronic medical records. Topics covered include analysis of medical images, machine learning, biomedical nanosensors, wireless technologies, and instrumentation and electrical stimulation. Biomedical Signal Processing: Innovation and Applications presents tutorials and examples of successful applications, and will appeal to a wide range of professionals, researchers, and students interested in applications of signal processing, medicine, and biology.

This book describes recent radiotherapy technologies including tools for measuring target position during radiotherapy and tracking-based delivery systems. This book presents a customized prediction of respiratory motion with clustering from multiple patient interactions. The proposed method contributes to the improvement of patient treatments by considering breathing pattern for the accurate dose calculation in radiotherapy systems. Real-time tumor-tracking, where the prediction of irregularities becomes relevant, has yet to be clinically established. The statistical quantitative modeling for irregular breathing classification, in which commercial respiration traces are retrospectively categorized into several classes based on breathing pattern are discussed as well. The proposed statistical classification may provide clinical advantages to adjust the dose rate before and during the external beam radiotherapy for minimizing the safety margin. In the first chapter following the Introduction to this book, we review three prediction approaches of respiratory motion: model-based methods, model-free heuristic learning algorithms, and hybrid methods. In the following chapter, we present a phantom study-prediction of human motion with distributed body sensors-using a Polhemus Liberty AC magnetic tracker. Next we describe respiratory motion estimation with hybrid implementation of extended Kalman filter. The given method assigns the recurrent neural network the role of the predictor and the extended Kalman filter the role of the corrector. After that, we present customized prediction of respiratory motion with clustering from multiple patient interactions. For the customized prediction, we construct the clustering based on breathing patterns of multiple patients using the feature selection metrics that are composed of a variety of breathing features. We have evaluated the new algorithm by comparing the prediction overshoot and the tracking estimation value. The experimental results of 448 patients' breathing patterns validated the proposed irregular breathing classifier in the last chapter.

This book provides a practically applicable guide to designing evidence-based medical apps and mHealth interventions. It features detailed guidance and case studies where applicable on the best practices and available techniques from both technological (platform technologies, toolkits, sensors) and research perspectives. This approach enables the reader to develop a deep understanding of how to collect the appropriate data and work with users to build a user friendly app for their target audience. Information on how researchers and designers can communicate their intentions with a variety of stakeholders including medical practitioners, developers and researchers to ensure the best possible decisions are made during the development process to produce an app of optimal quality that also considers usability. Developing Medical Apps and mHealth Interventions comprehensively covers the development of medical and health apps for researchers, informaticians and physicians, and is a valuable resource for the experienced professional and trainee seeking a text on how to develop user friendly medical apps.

Encyclopedia of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: ABC of Bioinformatics, Three Volume Set combines elements of computer science, information technology, mathematics, statistics and biotechnology, providing the methodology and in silico solutions to mine biological data and processes. The book covers Theory, Topics and Applications, with a special focus on Integrative -omics and Systems Biology. The theoretical, methodological underpinnings of BCB, including phylogeny are covered, as are more current areas of focus, such as translational bioinformatics, cheminformatics, and environmental informatics. Finally, Applications provide guidance for commonly asked questions. This major reference work spans basic and cutting-edge methodologies authored by leaders in the field, providing an invaluable resource for students, scientists, professionals in research institutes, and a broad swath of researchers in biotechnology and the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries.

The recent accumulation of information from genomes, including their sequences, has resultednotonlyinnewattemptstoansweroldquestionsandsolvelongstandingissues inbiology, butalsointheformulationofnovelhypothesesthatarisepreciselyfromthis wealth of data. The storage, processing, description, transmission, connection, and analysis of these data has prompted bioinformatics to become one the most relevant applied sciences for this new century, walking hand-in-hand with modern molecular biology and clearly impacting areas like biotechnology and biomedicine. Bioinformatics skills have now become essential for many scientists working with DNA sequences. With this idea in mind, this book aims to provide practical guidance andtroubleshootingadviceforthecomputationalanalysisofDNAsequences, covering a range of issues and methods that unveil the multitude of applications and relevance that Bioinformatics has today. The analysis of protein sequences has been purposely excludedtogainfocus.Individualbookchaptersareorientedtowardthedescriptionof theuseofspecificbioinformaticstools, accompaniedbypracticalexamples, adiscussion on the interpretation of results, and specific comments on strengths and limitations of the methods and tools. In a sense, chapters could be seen as enriched task-oriented manuals that will direct the reader in completing specific bioinformatics analyses. The target audience for this book is biochemists, and molecular and evolutionary biologiststhatwanttolearnhowtoanalyzeDNAsequencesinasimplebutmeaningful fashion. Readers do not need a special background in statistics, mathematics, or computer science, just a basic knowledge of molecular biology and genetics. All the tools described in the book are free and all of them can be downloaded or accessed throughtheweb.Mostchapterscouldbeusedforpracticaladvancedundergraduateor graduate-level courses in bioinformatics and molecular evolut

This book focuses on various aspects of computer vision applications in the field of healthcare. It covers new tools and technologies in some of the important areas of medical science like histopathological image analysis, cancer taxonomy, use of deep learning architecture dental care, and many more. Furthermore, this book reviews and discusses the use of intelligent learning-based algorithms for increasing the precision in medical domain. The book discusses different computer vision algorithms which are useful in various industries and day-to-day life. It also highlights many challenges faced by research community, like view point variations, scale variations, illumination variations, multi-modalities, and noise.

This open access book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emerging infectious disease outbreaks due to disruption of ecosystems, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure - and without comprehensive surveillance, delays in outbreak identification, resource deployment, and case management can be catastrophic. In combination with context-informed analytics, students will learn how non-traditional digital disease data sources - including news media, social media, Google Trends, and Google Street View - can fill critical knowledge gaps and help inform on-the-ground decision-making when formal surveillance systems are insufficient.

This proceedings contains articles submitted to the fifth International Conference on Cognitive Neurodynamics (ICCN2015). In ICCN2015, twelve invited plenary lectures were presented by the leading scientists in their respective research fields. More than 15 mini-symposiums are organized by specialists with topics covering: motor control and learning, dynamic coding in distributed neural circuits, dynamics of firing patterns and synchronization in neuronal systems, information and signal processing techniques in neurotechnology, neural oscillations and synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus, new perspective on model-based vs. model-free brain process, neural mechanisms of internal switching, neuroinformation computation, neural model and dynamics, imaging human cognitive networks, neuroinformatics, neuroergonomics & neuroengineering, dynamic brain for communication, visual information processing and functional imaging and neural mechanisms of language processing. All articles are peer-reviewed. The ICCN is a series conference held every two years since 2007.

The papers in this proceeding discuss current and future trends in wearable communications and personal health management through the use of wireless body area networks (WBAN). The authors posit new technologies that can provide trustworthy communications mechanisms from the user to medical health databases. The authors discuss not only on-body devices, but also technologies providing information in-body. Also discussed are dependable communications combined with accurate localization and behavior analysis, which will benefit WBAN technology and make the healthcare processes more effective. The papers were presented at the 13th EAI International Conference on Body Area Networks (BODYNETS 2018), Oulu, Finland, 02-03 October 2018.

Gain the medical insurance skills you need to succeed in today's outpatient and inpatient settings! Fordney's Medical Insurance and Billing, 16th Edition helps you master the insurance billing specialist's role and responsibilities in areas such as diagnostic coding, procedural coding, billing, and collection. Using clear, non-technical explanations, this book covers all of the types of insurance coverage commonly encountered in hospitals, physicians' offices, and clinics. Step-by-step guidelines lead you through medical documentation and administrative procedures. Written by coding specialist and educator Linda M. Smith, this market-leading text is a complete guide to becoming an efficient insurance billing specialist. Coverage of medical documentation, diagnostic coding, and procedural coding provides you with the foundation and skills needed to work in a physician's office as well as outpatient and inpatient settings. Coverage of the role and responsibilities of the insurance billing specialist emphasizes advanced job opportunities and certification. Step-by-step procedures detail common responsibilities of the insurance billing specialist and coder. Key terms and abbreviationsare defined and emphasized, reinforcing your understanding of new concepts and terminology. Color-coded icons denote and clarify information, rules, and regulations for each type of payer. Privacy, Security, and HIPAA chapter and Compliance Alerts throughout the book highlight important HIPAA compliance issues and regulations. NEW! Insights From The Field includes short interviews with insurance billing specialists who have experience in the field, providing a snapshot of their career paths and offering advice to the new student. NEW! Scenario boxes help you apply concepts to real-world situations. NEW! Quick Review sections summarize chapter content and also include review questions. NEW! Discussion Points provide the opportunity for students and instructors to participate in interesting and open dialogues related to the chapter's content. NEW! Expanded Health Care Facility Billing chapters are revised to provide the latest information impacting the insurance billing specialist working in a variety of healthcare facility settings. NEW! Insights From The Field includes short interviews with insurance billing specialists who have experience in the field, providing a snapshot of their career paths and offering advice to the new student. NEW! Scenario boxes help you apply concepts to real-world situations. NEW! Quick Review sections summarize chapter content and also include review questions. NEW! Discussion Points provide the opportunity for students and instructors to participate in interesting and open dialogues related to the chapter's content. NEW! Expanded Health Care Facility Billing chapters are revised to provide the latest information impacting the insurance billing specialist working in a variety of healthcare facility settings.

This extensively revised 4th edition comprehensively covers information retrieval from a biomedical and health perspective, providing an understanding of the theory, implementation, and evaluation of information retrieval systems in the biomedical and health domain. It features revised chapters covering the theory, practical applications, evaluation and research directions of biomedical and health information retrieval systems. Emphasis is placed on defining where current applications and research systems are heading in a range of areas, including their use by clinicians, consumers, researchers, and others. Information Retrieval: A Biomedical and Health Perspective provides a practically applicable guide to range of techniques for information retrieval and is ideal for use by both the trainee and experienced biomedical informatician seeking an up-to-date resource on the topic.

This book highlights the analytics and optimization issues in healthcare systems, proposes new approaches, and presents applications of innovative approaches in real facilities. In the past few decades, there has been an exponential rise in the application of swarm intelligence techniques for solving complex and intricate problems arising in healthcare. The versatility of these techniques has made them a favorite among scientists and researchers working in diverse areas. The primary objective of this book is to bring forward thorough, in-depth, and well-focused developments of hybrid variants of swarm intelligence algorithms and their applications in healthcare systems.

Gold nanoparticles provide a platform for the development of new and efficient diagnostic and therapeutic tools.This book offers a general guide to the synthesis and coating of gold nanoparticles. It describes the links between optical features and geometries of gold nanoparticles and provides a readily comprehensible connection in all the chapters between the geometry of gold nanoparticles and their final applications.

The book set develops a bridge between physiologic mechanisms and diagnostic human engineering. While the first volume is focused on the interface between physiologic mechanisms and the resultant biosignals, this second volume is devoted to the interface between biosignals and biomedical sensors. That is, in the first volume, the physiologic mechanisms determining biosignals are described from the basic cellular level up to their advanced mutual coordination level. This second volume, considers the genesis of acoustic and optic biosignals and the associated sensing technology from a strategic point of view. As a novelty, this book discusses heterogeneous biosignals within a common frame. This frame comprises both the biosignal formation path from the biosignal source at the physiological level to biosignal propagation in the body, and the biosignal sensing path from the biosignal transmission in the sensor applied on the body up to its conversion to a, usually electric, signal. Some biosignals arise in the course of the body's vital functions while others map these functions that convey physiological data to an observer. It is highly instructive how sound and light beams interact with biological tissues, yielding acoustic and optic biosignals, respectively. Discussed phenomena teach a lot about the physics of sound and physics of light (as engineering sciences), and, on the other hand, biology and physiology (as live sciences). The highly interdisciplinary nature of biosignals and biomedical sensors is obviously a challenge. However, it is a rewarding challenge after it has been coped with in a strategic way, as offered here. The book is intended to have the presence to answer intriguing "Aha!" questions.

This book reviews the recent research into biological aspects of suicide behavior and outlines each of the varied, recent approaches to prevent suicide. Suicidal behavior, perhaps, is the most complex behavior that combines biological, social, and psychological factors. A new frontier and new opportunities are opening with the technologies of data acquisition and data analysis. Personalized models based on digital phenotype could provide promising strategies for preventing suicide.

This text for students and researchers, takes an interdisciplinary approach to describing the chemistry and physics of materials, their biocompatibility, and the consequences of implantation of devices made of these materials into the human body. The reader is introduced to the principles of polymer science and the study of metals, ceramics and composites, and also to the basic biology required to understand the nature of the host-transplant interface. Topics covered in this book include the macromolecular components of cells and tissues, self-assembly processes, biological cascade systems, microscopic structure of cells and tissues, immunology, transplantation biology, and the pathobiology of wound healing. Topics covered in the materials science chapters include the structures and properties of polymers, metals, ceramics and composites, and the processes for forming materials as well as the pathobiology of devices. The final two chapters deal with tissue engineering and the relations between the biology of cells and tissue transplantation, and the engineering of tissue replacements using passaged cells.

Applications of synthetic materials in medicine date back over 4000 year2. The Egyptians used linen as sutures. In the Roman Empire, gold was used in dentistry. Perhaps even earlier, ivory and bone may have been used in the body by practitioners of the healing arts. The historical origins of modem biomaterials science are also hard to precisely trace, but many of the ideas that define biomaterials as we know them today evolved in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Surface modification technology has played a prominent role in biomaterials science, and has paralleled the evolution of the modem field. In a symposium organized by the Artifical Heart Program of the NIH National Heart Institute and the Artificial Kidney program of the NIH National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1968, there were already a number of presentations on surface modification. Surface characterization at that time included scanning electron microscopy, ellipsometry, contact angle methods, and infrared internal reflection methods.