Biodegradable, polymer-based systems are playing an increasingly pivotal role in tissue engineering replacement and regeneration. This type of biology-driven materials science is slated to be one of the key research areas of the 21st century. The following aspects are crucial: the development of adequate human cell culture to produce the tissues in adequate polymer scaffold materials; the development of culture technology with which human tissues can be grown ex-vivo in 3D polymer matrices; the development of material technology for producing the degradable, 3D matrices, having mechanical properties similar to natural tissue. In addressing these and similar problems, the book contains chapters on biodegradable polymers, polymeric biomaterials, surface modification for controlling cell-material interactions, scaffold design and processing, biomimetic coatings, biocompatibility evaluation, tissue engineering constructs, cell isolation, characterisation and culture, and controlled release of bioactive agents.

Connected Health is the most dynamic phenomenon in healthcare technology today. From smartphones and tablets to apps, body sensors and telemedicine, Connected Health promises to stir foundational shifts in healthcare quality and delivery. This is a watershed moment in healthcare - the Connected Health ecosystem is dramatically impacting healthcare's stakeholders, from patients to C-Suite executives, and is delivering on the tri aim: quality care, coordination and cost savings. This new book conducts a focused examination of wearables as an explosive niches of the Connect Health market. Covering a range of issues from wearable applications in the consumer and provider spaces, to emerging technology solutions and hurdles to successful deployment, this book also provides an engaging discussion about wearables as a change agent of healthcare delivery. The discussion continues with and examination of the interplay between solutions like wearables in the Healthcare Internet of Things ("IoT") landscape. The book also explores the scope and trajectory of the Connected Health ecosystem through a combination of expert commentary and selected case studies. It serves as an educational resource as well as a practical guide in strategizing and executing a Connected Health market and product strategy.

"True wellness innovation requires the recruitment of multi-disciplinary participants. This book breaks the mold with examples from healthcare experts and other professionals who have leveraged informatics to better the lives of their constituents." - Jason Helgerson, Founder & CEO, Helgerson Solutions Group LLC Developed for those training in academic centers as well as for those already "out in the field," this book looks at how attorneys, behavioral health experts, business development experts, chief information officers, chief medical officers, chief nursing information officers, consumer advocates, cryptographic experts, futurists, geneticists, informaticists, managed care executives, nurses, pharmacists, physicians, public health professionals, software developers, systems security officers, and workforce experts are collaborating on a "team-based," IT-enabled approach to improve healthcare.

Connected Health is the most dynamic phenomenon in healthcare technology today. From smartphones and tablets to apps, body sensors and telemedicine, Connected Health promises to stir foundational shifts in healthcare quality and delivery. This is a watershed moment in healthcare - the Connected Health ecosystem is dramatically impacting healthcare's stakeholders, from patients to C-Suite executives, and is delivering on the tri aim: quality care, coordination and cost savings. This new book conducts a focused examination of wearables as an explosive niches of the Connect Health market. Covering a range of issues from wearable applications in the consumer and provider spaces, to emerging technology solutions and hurdles to successful deployment, this book also provides an engaging discussion about wearables as a change agent of healthcare delivery. The discussion continues with and examination of the interplay between solutions like wearables in the Healthcare Internet of Things ("IoT") landscape. The book also explores the scope and trajectory of the Connected Health ecosystem through a combination of expert commentary and selected case studies. It serves as an educational resource as well as a practical guide in strategizing and executing a Connected Health market and product strategy.

The pervasive healthcare system focus towards achieving two specific goals: the availability of eHealth applications and medical information anywhere and anytime and the invisibility of computing. Furthermore, pervasive health system encompasses new types of sensing and communication of health information as well as new type of interactions among health providers and people, among patients, among patients and researchers and patients and corporations. This book aims at promoting the discussion on current trends in technologies and concepts that help integrate health monitoring and healthcare more seamlessly to our everyday lives, regardless of space and time, but also present cutting edge perspectives and visions to highlight future development. The book presents not only the state of the art technologies and solutions to tackle the critical challenges faced by the building and development of the pervasive health system but also potential impact on society at social, medical and technological level.

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.

The EU Physical Agents Directive on Noise, which will be implemented into UK law in February 2006, will reduce noise action levels drastically. Under the new regulations, many more industries, which have so far not been associated with high noise levels such as restaurants and call centres, will have to assess the noise levels in their businesses and monitor their employees' hearing according to HSE guidelines. This practical guide gives occupational health nurses everything they need to know about setting up and managing hearing conservation programmes, as well as how to carry out the audiometric tests. The text fully covers the syllabus of BSA accredited courses for the certificate of competence in Industrial Audiometry and includes practical examples, case studies, sample audiograms and questionnaires for setting up case histories. As the BSA syllabus is based on the HSE's guidelines, the book will be a useful training manual and up-to-date reference for Health and Safety professionals, Occupational Health professionals, and HSE inspectors. Dr Maryanne Maltby is an Audiological Scientist and Principal Lecturer on the Amplivox courses in Industrial Audiometry. She has previously taught Audiology and related subjects at Manchester University (Course Leader) and at Oxford Brookes University. She is a committee member of the Hearing Aid Council and a member of the British Society of Audiology. She also has wide consultancy experience in workplace training and advice on hearing conservation issues, fitting hearing protection, management of hearing and tinnitus problems at work.

Data management and analysis is one of the fastest growing and most challenging areas of research and development in both academia and industry. Numerous types of applications and services have been studied and re-examined in this field resulting in this edited volume which includes chapters on effective approaches for dealing with the inherent complexity within data management and analysis. This edited volume contains practical case studies, and will appeal to students, researchers and professionals working in data management and analysis in the business, education, healthcare, and bioinformatics areas.

The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) 2016 is an international, multidisciplinary conference for the presentation and discussion of current research in the theory and application of computational methods in problems of biological significance. Presentations are rigorously peer reviewed and are published in an archival proceedings volume. PSB 2016 will be held on January 4 - 8, 2016 in Kohala Coast, Hawaii. Tutorials and workshops will be offered prior to the start of the conference.PSB 2016 will bring together top researchers from the US, the Asian Pacific nations, and around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in all aspects of computational biology. It is a forum for the presentation of work in databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling, and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology.The PSB has been designed to be responsive to the need for critical mass in sub-disciplines within biocomputing. For that reason, it is the only meeting whose sessions are defined dynamically each year in response to specific proposals. PSB sessions are organized by leaders of research in biocomputing's 'hot topics.' In this way, the meeting provides an early forum for serious examination of emerging methods and approaches in this rapidly changing field.

Authoritative international experts comprehensively review many current state-of-the-art uses of polymers, metals, and ceramics in the human body. A veritable encyclopedia of valuable data and experience, this volume not only fully addresses the major issues of compatibility and functionality, but also provides a technical treatise on the design and evaluation of biomaterials for vascular application and on biomaterials as carriers for bioactive agents. A second volume, Biomaterials Engineering and Devices: Human Applications, Volume 2 is devoted to biomaterials for dental applications, bony biomaterials for grafting applications, and orthopedic fixtures and cements. Extensively illustrated and referenced, Biomaterials Engineering and Devices: Human Applications, Volume 1: Fundamentals and Vascular and Carrier Applications integrates for today's bioengineering professionals the basic science, engineering, and practical medical experience needed to meet the ever-growing demand for new and better biomaterials.

Man has recognised an association of light with life and medicine for over 3000 years. Today the major challenges to this topic include the elucidation of photochemical reactions involved in photobiology at the molecular level. This includes the use of a variety of modem probing techniques that directly measures the reactivity of excited states and free radicals involved in biological reactions. This text-book is based on such an approach and has arisen from some of the lectures delivered at the NATO ASI held at Hotel Capo Caccia near the Centre for Advanced Research in Photobiology (CARP) in Sardegia, Italy. The ASI took place from 30 September -13 October 1993 and involved a total membership of 90. The book, like the NATO ASI itself, is divided into four themes starting with fundamental aspects and ending with complex medically related systems. Thus Theme 1 covers aspects of the underlying photophysics and photochemistry with particular emphasis on modem experimental techniques to study molecular mechanisms of biological processes. Theme 2 applies many of these fundamental studies to the chemical reactions of most relevance to photobiology and photomedicine such as photo-addition, -isomerization, -sensitization and -pigmentation. The third and fourth Themes deal with the deleterious and therapeutic aspects of light with particular emphasis on the use of Photo-Dynamic Therapy (PDT) to treat cancer and on viral and micro bioi infections.

Intelligent data analysis, data mining and knowledge discovery in databases have recently gained the attention of a large number of researchers and practitioners. This is witnessed by the rapidly increasing number of submissions and participants at related conferences and workshops, by the emergence of new journals in this area (e.g., Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Intelligent Data Analysis, etc.), and by the increasing number of new applications in this field. In our view, the awareness of these challenging research fields and emerging technologies has been much larger in industry than in medicine and pharmacology. The main purpose of this book is to present the various techniques and methods that are available for intelligent data analysis in medicine and pharmacology, and to present case studies of their application. Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology consists of selected (and thoroughly revised) papers presented at the First International Workshop on Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology (IDAMAP-96) held in Budapest in August 1996 as part of the 12th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-96), IDAMAP-96 was organized with the motivation to gather scientists and practitioners interested in computational data analysis methods applied to medicine and pharmacology, aimed at narrowing the increasing gap between excessive amounts of data stored in medical and pharmacological databases on the one hand, and the interpretation, understanding and effective use of stored data on the other hand. Besides the revised Workshop papers, the book contains a selection of contributions by invited authors. The expected readership of the book is researchers and practitioners interested in intelligent data analysis, data mining, and knowledge discovery in databases, particularly those who are interested in using these technologies in medicine and pharmacology. Researchers and students in artificial intelligence and statistics should find this book of interest as well. Finally, much of the presented material will be interesting to physicians and pharmacologists challenged by new computational technologies, or simply in need of effectively utilizing the overwhelming volumes of data collected as a result of improved computer support in their daily professional practice.

Data Warehousing for Biomedical Informatics is a step-by-step how-to guide for designing and building an enterprise-wide data warehouse across a biomedical or healthcare institution, using a four-iteration lifecycle and standardized design pattern. It enables you to quickly implement a fully-scalable generic data architecture that supports your organization's clinical, operational, administrative, financial, and research data. By following the guidelines in this book, you will be able to successfully progress through the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma versions, plus fully implement your first production release in about a year. The Alpha version allows you to implement just enough of the basic design pattern to illustrate its core capabilities while loading a small sampling of limited data for demonstration purposes. This provides an easy way for everyone involved to visualize the new warehouse paradigm by actually examining a core subset of the working system. You can finish the Alpha version, also referred to as the proof-of-concept, in as little as 3-4 weeks. The Beta version, which can be completed in about 2-3 months, adds required functionality and much more data. It allows you to get the full warehouse up and running quickly, in order to facilitate longer-term planning, user and support team training, and setup of the operational environment. The Gamma version, which is a fully-functional system-though still lacking data-can be implemented in about 3-4 months. About one year after starting, you will be ready to launch Release 1.0 as a complete and secure data warehouse.

Medical Instruments and Devices: Principles and Practices originates from the medical instruments and devices section of The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, Fourth Edition. Top experts in the field provide material that spans this wide field. The text examines how biopotential amplifiers help regulate the quality and content of measured signals. It includes instruments and devices that span a range of physiological systems and the physiological scale: molecular, cellular, organ, and system. The book chronicles the evolution of pacemakers and their system operation and discusses oscillometry, cardiac output measurement, and the direct and indirect methods of measuring cardiac output. The authors also expound on the mechanics and safety of defibrillators and cover implantable stimulators, respiration, and the structure and function of mechanical ventilators. In addition, this text covers in depth: Anesthesia Delivery Electrosurgical Units and Devices Biomedical Lasers Measuring Cellular Traction Forces Blood Glucose Monitoring Atomic Force Microscopy Parenteral Infusion Devices Clinical Laboratory: Separation and Spectral Methods Clinical Laboratory: Nonspectral Methods and Automation Noninvasive Optical Monitoring An offshoot from the definitive "bible" of biomedical engineering, Medical Instruments and Devices: Principles and Practices offers you state-of-the-art information on biomedical instruments and devices. This text serves practicing professionals working in the areas of medical devices and instrumentation as well as graduate students studying bioengineering, instrumentation, and medical devices, and it provides readers with a practical foundation and a wealth of resources from well-known experts in the field.

This book offers a global perspective on healthcare reform and its relationship with efforts to improve quality and safety. It looks at the ways reforms have developed in 30 countries, and specifically the impact national reform initiatives have had on the quality and safety of care. It explores how reforms drive quality and safety improvement, and equally how they act to negate such goals. Every country included in this book is involved in a reform and improvement process, but each takes place in a particular social, cultural, economic and developmental context, leading to differing emphases and varied progress. Methods for tackling common problems - financing, efficiencies, effectiveness, evidence-based practice, institutional reforms, quality improvement, and patient safety initiatives - also differ. Representatives from each nation provide a chapter to convey their own situation. The editors draw a conclusion from these numerous contributions and synthesize the themes emerging into a coherent 'lessons learned' summary that delivers value to the numerous stakeholders. Healthcare Reform, Quality and Safety forms a compendium of the current 'state of the art' in global healthcare reform. This is the first book of its type, and offers a unique opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas to the mutual benefit of countries involved in the project. The content will be of interest to governments, policymakers, managers and leaders, clinicians, teaching academics, researchers and students.

This book aims to demonstrate the benefits of implementing Industry 4.0 in healthcare services and to recommend a framework to support this implementation. Key topics in this book include: (1) Discovering emerging technologies and techniques to support Healthcare 4.0, this includes the Internet of Things (IOT) , Big data analytics, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) , Optimisation and Predictive Analytics; (2) Illustrating some examples of such advanced implementation in Healthcare 4.0; (3) Recommending a development process to develop health technology start-ups and entrepreneurial activities; and (4) Discuss the transformation methodology used to redesign healthcare processes in order to overcome the challenges of implementing a Healthcare 4.0 project.

Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine
Thomas S. Deisboeck and J. Yasha Kresh

Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine covers the emerging field of systems science involving the application of physics, mathematics, engineering and computational methods and techniques to the study of biomedicine including nonlinear dynamics at the molecular, cellular, multi-cellular tissue, and organismic level. With all chapters helmed by leading scientists in the field, Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine's goal is to offer its audience a timely compendium of the ongoing research directed to the understanding of biological processes as whole systems instead of as isolated component parts.
In Parts I & II, Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine provides a general systems thinking perspective and presents some of the fundamental theoretical underpinnings of this rapidly emerging field. Part III then follows with a multi-scaled approach, spanning from the molecular to macroscopic level, exemplified by studying such diverse areas as molecular networks and developmental processes, the immune and nervous systems, the heart, cancer and multi-organ failure. The volume concludes with Part IV that addresses methods and techniques driven in design and development by this new understanding of biomedical science.

Key Topics Include:
a [ Historic Perspectives of General Systems Thinking
a [ Fundamental Methods and Techniques for Studying Complex Dynamical Systems
a [ Applications from Molecular Networks to Disease Processes
a [ Enabling Technologies for Exploration of Systems in the Life Sciences

Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine is essential reading for experimental, theoretical, and interdisciplinary scientists working in the biomedical research field interested in a comprehensive overview of this rapidly emerging field.

About the Editors:
Thomas S. Deisboeck is currently Assistant Professor of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. An expert in interdisciplinary cancer modeling, Dr. Deisboeck is Director of the Complex Biosystems Modeling Laboratory which is part of the Harvard-MIT Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging.

J. Yasha Kresh is currently Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Research Director, Professor of Medicine and Director of Cardiovascular Biophysics at the Drexel University College of Medicine. An expert in dynamical systems, he holds appointments in the School of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Molecular Pathobiology Program. Prof. Kresh is Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, Biomedical Engineering Society, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

This work contains the state-of-the-art in Virtual Reality as applied to Medicine. Interactive technology, used in many research and development programs, can be applied to health care by involving: robotics, computer vision, simulation, artificial intelligence, image manipulation and storage, data gloves, man-machine interfaces, etc. The Health Telematics Application Program, for example, is advancing virtual reality and enabling technologies (simulation, visualization and robotics) in health care services for patients, the elderly and persons with disabilities. This book addresses the following items from the end-user's perspective: technology transfer, telerobotics, telemedicine, education and training, and virtual reality. 'the book would (...) be useful for those researching interactive technologies in health care, especially virtual reality (...). It would be also of interest to people who want to keep abreast of the latest developments in techno-medical research.' - Rod Elford, Telemedicine Centre, Memorial University St John's, Newfoundland, Canada Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, volume 2, no. 3, 1996, p. 178 Covered by Current Contents, Life Sciences (ISI), volume 38, no. 34, August 1995, p. 11-13

Focusing on its recent proliferation in hospital systems, Wi-Fi Enabled Healthcare explains how Wi-Fi is transforming clinical work flows and infusing new life into the types of mobile devices being implemented in hospitals. Drawing on first-hand experiences from one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States, it covers the key areas associated with wireless network design, security, and support. Reporting on cutting-edge developments and emerging standards in Wi-Fi technologies, the book explores security implications for each device type. It covers real-time location services and emerging trends in cloud-based wireless architecture. It also outlines several options and design consideration for employee wireless coverage, voice over wireless (including smart phones), mobile medical devices, and wireless guest services. This book presents authoritative insight into the challenges that exist in adding Wi-Fi within a healthcare setting. It explores several solutions in each space along with design considerations and pros and cons. It also supplies an in-depth look at voice over wireless, mobile medical devices, and wireless guest services. The authors provide readers with the technical knowhow required to ensure their systems provide the reliable, end-to-end communications necessary to surmount today's challenges and capitalize on new opportunities. The shared experience and lessons learned provide essential guidance for large and small healthcare organizations in the United States and around the world. This book is an ideal reference for network design engineers and high-level hospital executives that are thinking about adding or improving upon Wi-Fi in their hospitals or hospital systems.

Biologists are stepping up their efforts in understanding the biological processes that underlie disease pathways in the clinical contexts. This has resulted in a flood of biological and clinical data from genomic and protein sequences, DNA microarrays, protein interactions, biomedical images, to disease pathways and electronic health records. To exploit these data for discovering new knowledge that can be translated into clinical applications, there are fundamental data analysis difficulties that have to be overcome. Practical issues such as handling noisy and incomplete data, processing compute-intensive tasks, and integrating various data sources, are new challenges faced by biologists in the post-genome era. This book will cover the fundamentals of state-of-the-art data mining techniques which have been designed to handle such challenging data analysis problems, and demonstrate with real applications how biologists and clinical scientists can employ data mining to enable them to make meaningful observations and discoveries from a wide array of heterogeneous data from molecular biology to pharmaceutical and clinical domains.

This book provides the reader with empirical findings on innovative signal processing approaches to detecting pathologies in infant cries, by comparing new technological approaches to standard ones. The contributors examine novel approaches to machine adaptation to dysarthric speech.

This book presents state-of-the-art research methods, results, and applications in social media and health research. It aims to help readers better understand the different aspects of using social web platforms in health research. Throughout the chapters, the benefits, limitations, and best practices of using a variety of social web platforms in health research are discussed with concrete use cases. This is an ideal book for biomedical researchers, clinicians, and health consumers (including patients) who are interested in learning how social web platforms impact health and healthcare research.

The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) 2014 is an international, multidisciplinary conference for the presentation and discussion of current research in the theory and application of computational methods in problems of biological significance. Presentations are rigorously peer reviewed and are published in an archival proceedings volume. PSB 2014 will be held from January 3 - 7, 2014 in Kohala Coast, Hawaii. Tutorials and workshops will be offered prior to the start of the conference.PSB 2014 will bring together top researchers from the US, the Asian Pacific nations, and around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in all aspects of computational biology. It is a forum for the presentation of work in databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling, and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology.The PSB has been designed to be responsive to the need for critical mass in sub-disciplines within biocomputing. For that reason, it is the only meeting whose sessions are defined dynamically each year in response to specific proposals. PSB sessions are organized by leaders of research in biocomputing's "hot topics." In this way, the meeting provides an early forum for serious examination of emerging methods and approaches in this rapidly changing field.

As many biological products face losing their patents in the next decade, the pharmaceutical industry needs an abbreviated regulatory pathway for approval of biosimilar drug products, which are cost-effective, follow-on/subsequent versions of the innovator's biologic products. But scientific challenges remain due to the complexity of both the manufacturing process and the structures of biosimilar products. Written by a top biostatistics researcher, Biosimilars: Design and Analysis of Follow-on Biologics is the first book entirely devoted to the statistical design and analysis of biosimilarity and interchangeability of biosimilar products. It includes comparability tests of important quality attributes at critical stages of the manufacturing processes of biologic products. Connecting the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry, government regulatory agencies, and academia, this state-of-the-art book focuses on the scientific factors and practical issues related to the design and analysis of biosimilar studies. It covers most of the statistical questions encountered in various study designs at different stages of research and development of biological products.

Most people think that stroke victims end up looking like Frankenstein with a horrible facial expression and erratic movements. But, that is not the way it has to be. Today, it is possible for some stroke victims to make a full recovery. Gerry Purdy knows this because his wife, Alicia - a healthy, beautiful and smart person - suffered a stroke on August 23, 2011 and was able to return to her vivacious self. Our Stroke of Luck portrays the life they had together. Gerry and Alicia had dated in high school and got back together for their 45th high school reunion. Life was good. And then - Bam! - without warning Alicia suffered a stroke. Find out how Alicia's neurosurgeon was able to remove the clot from her brain that caused the stroke. Experience the tense ups and downs of that night-one moment seeming as though she might be paralyzed on her left side for the rest of her life and then the next seeing a flash of hope. Gerry and Alicia were lucky that the radiologist was able to identify the clot in her brain and lucky to get her transferred to the Marcus Stroke Center at Grady Hospital in Atlanta. They were lucky that Dr. Nogueira was able to extract the clot from Alicia's brain. And, finally, they were lucky that she was able to make a full recovery. Truly, this was their stroke of luck.