Sensors for Health Monitoring discusses the characteristics of U-Healthcare systems in different domains, providing a foundation for working professionals and undergraduate and postgraduate students. The book provides information and advice on how to choose the best sensors for a U-Healthcare system, advises and guides readers on how to overcome challenges relating to data acquisition and signal processing, and presents comprehensive coverage of up-to-date requirements in hardware, communication and calculation for next-generation uHealth systems. It then compares new technological and technical trends and discusses how they address expected u-Health requirements. In addition, detailed information on system operations is presented and challenges in ubiquitous computing are highlighted. The book not only helps beginners with a holistic approach toward understanding u-Health systems, but also presents researchers with the technological trends and design challenges they may face when designing such systems.

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the basic computer technology. Each succeeding chapter, describes the problems in medicine, followed by a review in chronological sequence of why and how computers were applied to try to meet these problems. Only the technical aspects of computer hardware, software, and communications are discussed as they are necessary to explain how the technology was applied. This approach generally led to defining the objectives for applications of medical informatics. At the end of each chapter, the author summarizes his personal views and interpretations of the chapter contents. Although the concurrent evolution of medical informatics in Canada, Europe, and Japan certainly influenced workers in the United States, the scope of this historical review is limited to the development of medical informatics within the United States. Furthermore, this review is limited to electronic digital computers; it excludes mechanical, analog, and hybrid computers.

This new edition surveys the full range of available structural equation modeling (SEM) methodologies. The book has been updated throughout to reflect the arrival of new software packages, which have made analysis much easier than in the past. Applications in a broad range of disciplines are discussed, particularly in the social sciences where many key concepts are not directly observable. This book presents SEM's development in its proper historical context-essential to understanding the application, strengths and weaknesses of each particular method. This book also surveys the emerging path and network approaches that complement and enhance SEM, and that are growing in importance. SEM's ability to accommodate unobservable theory constructs through latent variables is of significant importance to social scientists. Latent variable theory and application are comprehensively explained and methods are presented for extending their power, including guidelines for data preparation, sample size calculation and the special treatment of Likert scale data. Tables of software, methodologies and fit statistics provide a concise reference for any research program, helping assure that its conclusions are defensible and publishable.

New technologies in 3D printing offer innovative capabilities in surgery, from planning complex operations through to educational purposes and providing alternatives to traditional training with more cost-effective outcomes. This hot topic title synthesizes the most up-to-date information on 3D printing and its application into surgical specialties including, hebatobilliary and pancreatic surgery, vascular surgery, orthopedic surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, and more. Discusses challenges and opportunities of 3D printing across surgical sub-specialties. Covers 3D printing and its application in major surgical specialties, as well as dentistry, transplantation, global surgery, and diagnostic and interventional radiology. Consolidates today's available information on this burgeoning topic into a single convenient resource.

Myocardial tissue engineering (MTE), a concept that intends to prolong patients life after cardiac damage by supporting or restoring heart function, is continuously improving. Common MTE strategies include an engineered vehicle, which may be a porous scaffold or a dense substrate or patch, made of either natural or synthetic polymeric materials. The function of the substrate is to aid transportation of cells into the diseased region of the heart and support their integration. This book, which contains chapters written by leading experts in MTE, gives a complete analysis of the area and presents the latest advances in the field. The chapters cover all relevant aspects of MTE strategies, including cell sources, specific TE techniques and biomaterials used. Many different cell types have been suggested for cell therapy in the framework of MTE, including autologous bone marrow-derived or cardiac progenitors, as well as embryonic or induced pluripotent stem cells, each having their particular advantages and disadvantages. The book covers a complete range of biomaterials, examining different aspects of their application in MTE, such as biocompatibility with cardiac cells, mechanical capability and compatibility with the mechanical properties of the native myocardium as well as degradation behaviour in vivo and in vitro. Although a great deal of research is being carried out in the field, this book also addresses many questions that still remain unanswered and highlights those areas in which further research efforts are required. The book will also give an insight into clinical trials and possible novel cell sources for cell therapy in MTE."

In his treatment of activity measurement in the fields of medicine and psychology, Tryon gives us a book that clearly accomplishes the three purposes set out in its preface. The reader is definitely encouraged to wrestle with the concepts ofbehavior and activity in terms of "dynamic physical quantities." Moreover, the reader cannot help but become familiarized with the technology available for performing activity measurements. Motivation to use some of this technology is enhanced by the very extensive summary of other people's uses of it provided throughout the book. Readers may find the book provocative on a number of Ievels. It is concep tually provocative to those of us struggling with understanding basic issues in the assessment and measurement of behavior. It is practically provocative to those of us working with various forms of behavioral difference, especially in clinical popula tions. The book provokes because it is essentially an unfinished exploration, open ing us to numerous pathways that, when traveled, reveal still more paths to explore. In this sense the book should be heuristically useful both in the more traditional empirical sense, and in terms of its Stimulation of conceptual discussion."

This publication identifies and discusses important challenges affecting eHealth in the EU and North America in the three areas of law, ethics and governance. It makes meaningful contributions to the eHealth discourse by suggesting solutions and making recommendations for good practice and potential ways forward. Legal challenges discussed include issues related to electronic medical records, telemedicine, the Internet and pharmaceutical drugs, healthcare information systems and medical liability. Ethical challenges focus on telehealth and service delivery in the home, Web 2.0 and the Internet, patient perceptions and ethical frameworks. Governance challenges focus on IT governance in healthcare, governance and decision-making in acute care hospitals, and different models of eHealth governance. The publication provides useful support materials and readings for persons active in developing current understandings of the legal, ethical and governance challenges involved in the eHealth context.

Medical Ventilator System Basics: A clinical guide is a user-friendly guide to the basic principles and the technical aspects of mechanical ventilation and modern complex ventilator systems. Designed to be used at the bed side by busy clinicians, this book demystifies the internal workings of ventilators so they can be used with confidence for day-to-day needs, for advanced ventilation, as well as for patients who are difficult to wean off the ventilator. Using clear language, the author guides the reader from pneumatic principles to the anatomy and physiology of respiration. Split into 16 easy to read chapters, this guide discusses the system components such as the ventilator, breathing circuit, and humidifier, and considers the major ventilator functions, including the control parameters and alarms. Including over 200 full-colour illustrations and practical troubleshooting information you can rely on, regardless of ventilator models or brands, this guide is an invaluable quick-reference resource for both experienced and inexperienced users.

Since the publication of Hospital Computer Systems, edited by Morris F. Collen in 1974, many reviews have appeared presenting sound analyses and evaluations of the of hospital information systems (HIS). Many of latest developments and design them were published within the IMIA Working Group 10 which is devoted to HIS but still an updated and critical overview was lacking which reviews what has been achieved since then and which also takes a inspired glance into the future. As the quotation from Romain Rolland introducing this latest work by Rudi van de Velde states "/ love and admire the past but I would like the future to be even better. " Hence, it is noteworthy to point out that this book includes topics ranging from "Trends in Medical Informatics, Setting the Scene" to "HIS in the Years Ahead" and dealing separately with hospital management concerns and medical applications. Hospital management is the field wholly supported by the HIS, since it deals with transactions issued by the team of patient care professionals about the patients and, as such, handles computer communications between the more or less autonomous substructures of the hospital, including central and costly resources such as laboratories, radiology departments and pharmacies, and links medical and administrative services (as Marion J. Ball already pointed out when she undertook to categorize the HIS).

Bernhard Gleich introduces Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) including all aspects that are necessary for a complete understanding. MPI is a new imaging modality invented by Bernhard Gleich and Jurgen Weizenecker. The method is capable of imaging the distribution of superparamagnetic iron oxide particles (SPIOs) with high sensitivity, high spatial resolution, and high imaging speed. The author summarizes the results of a number of original papers and countless innovations he has elaborated in the young discipline of magnetic particle imaging."

The three-volume set LNCS 8149, 8150, and 8151 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2013, held in Nagoya, Japan, in September 2013. Based on rigorous peer reviews, the program committee carefully selected 262 revised papers from 789 submissions for presentation in three volumes. The 86 papers included in the second volume have been organized in the following topical sections: registration and atlas construction; microscopy, histology, and computer-aided diagnosis; motion modeling and compensation; segmentation; machine learning, statistical modeling, and atlases; computer-aided diagnosis and imaging biomarkers; physiological modeling, simulation, and planning; microscope, optical imaging, and histology; cardiology; vasculatures and tubular structures; brain segmentation and atlases; and functional MRI and neuroscience applications.

This book is intended to serve as a reference for professionals in the medical device industry, particularly those seeking to learn from practical examples and case studies. Medical devices, like pharmaceuticals, are highly regulated, and the bar is raised constantly as patients and consumers expect the best-quality healthcare and safe and effective medical technologies. Obtaining marketing authorization is the first major hurdle that med techs need to overcome in their pursuit of commercial success. Most books on regulatory affairs present regulations in each jurisdiction separately: European Union, USA, Australia, Canada, and Japan. This book proposes practical solutions for a coherent, one-size-fits-all (or most) set of systems and processes in compliance with regulations in all key markets, throughout the life cycle of a medical device. It also contains key information about international harmonization efforts and recent regulatory trends in emerging markets; important terminology needed to understand the regulators' language; and examples, case studies, and practical recommendations that bridge the gap between regulatory theory and practice.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Knowledge Representation for Health Care, KR4HC 2014, held as part of the Vienna Summer of Logic, VSL 2014, in Vienna, Austria, in July 2014. The workshop aimed at attracting the interest of novel research and advances contributing in the definition, representation and exploitation of health care knowledge in medical informatics. The 12 revised full research papers and 4 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions.

In nowadays aging society, many people require mobility assistance. Sometimes, assistive devices need a certain degree of autonomy when users' disabilities difficult manual control. However, clinicians report that excessive assistance may lead to loss of residual skills and frustration. Shared control focuses on deciding when users need help and providing it. Collaborative control aims at giving just the right amount of help in a transparent, seamless way. This book presents the collaborative control paradigm. User performance may be indicative of physical/cognitive condition, so it is used to decide how much help is needed. Besides, collaborative control integrates machine and user commands so that people contribute to self-motion at all times. Collaborative control was extensively tested for 3 years using a robotized wheelchair at a rehabilitation hospital in Rome with volunteer inpatients presenting different disabilities, ranging from mild to severe. We also present a taxonomy of common metrics for wheelchair navigation and tests are evaluated accordingly. Obtained results are coherent both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th IAPR International Conference on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics, PRIB 2013, held in Nice, France, in June 2013. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on bio-molecular networks and pathway analysis; learning, classification, and clustering; data mining and knowledge discovery; protein: structure, function, and interaction; motifs, sites, and sequence analysis.

The "information explosion" in recent decades has made it impossible for practicing physicians (even specialists) to keep up with all the information potentially at their disposal. As a result, it is not surprising that empirical studies have shown that physicians do not always make optimal decisions. Thus, medical expert systems are now available to support - not replace - physicians and healthcare providers in their goal of providing the best possible healthcare to every patient. Knowledge Engineering in Health Informatics is a guide to the creation of such systems. Presenting the core material for courses such as Medical Knowledge Engineering and Expert System Development, it allows non-experts to make diagnostic decisions with the precision and accuracy of medical experts thanks to the help of the computer.

The book uses STELLA software to develop simulation models, thus allowing readers to convert their understanding of a phenomenon to a computer model, and then run it to yield the inevitable dynamic consequences built into the structure. Part I provides an introduction to modeling dynamic systems, while Part II offers general modeling methods. Parts III through VIII then apply these methods to model real-world phenomena from chemistry, genetics, ecology, economics, and engineering. A clear, approachable introduction to the modeling process, of interest in any field where real problems can be illuminated by computer simulation.

This book provides a theoretical foundation for the analysis of discrete data such as count and binary data in the longitudinal setup. Unlike the existing books, this book uses a class of auto-correlation structures to model the longitudinal correlations for the repeated discrete data that accommodates all possible Gaussian type auto-correlation models as special cases including the equi-correlation models. This new dynamic modelling approach is utilized to develop theoretically sound inference techniques such as the generalized quasi-likelihood (GQL) technique for consistent and efficient estimation of the underlying regression effects involved in the model, whereas the existing 'working' correlations based GEE (generalized estimating equations) approach has serious theoretical limitations both for consistent and efficient estimation, and the existing random effects based correlations approach is not suitable to model the longitudinal correlations. The book has exploited the random effects carefully only to model the correlations of the familial data. Subsequently, this book has modelled the correlations of the longitudinal data collected from the members of a large number of independent families by using the class of auto-correlation structures conditional on the random effects. The book also provides models and inferences for discrete longitudinal data in the adaptive clinical trial set up. The book is mathematically rigorous and provides details for the development of estimation approaches under selected familial and longitudinal models. Further, while the book provides special cares for mathematics behind the correlation models, it also presents the illustrations of the statistical analysis of various real life data. This book will be of interest to the researchers including graduate students in biostatistics and econometrics, among other applied statistics research areas. Brajendra Sutradhar is a University Research Professor at Memorial University in St. John's, Canada. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and a fellow of the American Statistical Association. He has published about 110 papers in statistics journals in the area of multivariate analysis, time series analysis including forecasting, sampling, survival analysis for correlated failure times, robust inferences in generalized linear mixed models with outliers, and generalized linear longitudinal mixed models with bio-statistical and econometric applications. He has served as an associate editor for six years for Canadian Journal of Statistics and for four years for the Journal of Environmental and Ecological Statistics. He has served for 3 years as a member of the advisory committee on statistical methods in Statistics Canada. Professor Sutradhar was awarded 2007 distinguished service award of Statistics Society of Canada for his many years of services to the society including his special services for society's annual meetings.

Methodological problems have hampered researchers' efforts to understand and control AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic. This practical book addresses these problems by using actual health research case studies to develop strategies regarding design and sampling, measurement, and analysis and modeling issues. Researchers working on both biological and behavioral aspects of the disease will find this work a singularly effective tool to improve their study designs.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society, WIS 2014, held in Turku, Finland, in September 2014. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 64 submissions. The core topic is livability and quality of (urban) living with safety and security. The papers address topics such as secure and equal use of information resources, safe and secure work environments and education institutions, cyberaggression and cybersecurity as well as impact of culture on urban safety and security.

"Clinical Laboratory Blood Banking and Transfusion Medicine: Principles and Practices" provides readers with the didactic foundation, background, and tools to successfully function in a typical transfusion medicine laboratory. The text's teaching and learning package includes an Instructor's Manual, lecture slides, and test bank. Teaching and Learning Experience:

• Presents detailed technical information and real-life case studies that help learners envision themselves as members of the health care team
• Mixes theoretical and practical information that allows learners to analyze and synthesize the concepts
• Complemented by a variety of ancillary materials designed to help instructors be more effective and students more successful

"Software Tools and Algorithms for Biological Systems" is composed of a collection of papers received in response to an announcement that was widely distributed to academicians and practitioners in the broad area of computational biology and software tools. Also, selected authors of accepted papers of BIOCOMP'09 proceedings (International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: July 13-16, 2009; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA) were invited to submit the extended versions of their papers for evaluation.

New computerized approaches to various problems have become critically important in healthcare. Computer assisted diagnosis has been extended towards a support of the clinical treatment. Mathematical information analysis, computer applications together with medical equipment and instruments have become standard tools underpinning the current rapid progress with developing Computational Intelligence. We are witnessing a radical change as technologies have been integrated into systems that address the core of medicine, including patient care in ambulatory and in-patient setting, disease prevention, health promotion, rehabilitation and home care. Computer aided diagnosis and treatment systems increase the objectivity of the analysis and speed up the response to pathological changes.

This book presents a variety of state-of-the-art information technology and its applications to the networked environment to allow robust computerized approaches to be introduced throughout the healthcare enterprise. Patient's safety and shortening of the rehabilitation time requires a more rapid development of minimally invasive surgery supported by image navigation techniques. Home care, remote rehabilitation assistance, safety of the elderly requires new areas to be explored in telemedicine and telegeriatrics.

This book is a great reference tool for scientists who deal with problems of designing and implementing processing tools employed in systems that assist clinicians in patient diagnosis and treatment."

New computerized approaches to various problems have become critically important in healthcare. Computer assisted diagnosis has been extended towards a support of the clinical treatment. Mathematical information analysis, computer applications have become standard tools underpinning the current rapid progress with developing Computational Intelligence. A computerized support in the analysis of patient information and implementation of a computer aided diagnosis and treatment systems, increases the objectivity of the analysis and speeds up the response to pathological changes.

This book presents a variety of state-of-the-art information technology and its applications to the networked environment to allow robust computerized approaches to be introduced throughout the healthcare enterprise. Image analysis and its application is the traditional part that deals with the problem of data processing, recognition and classification. Bioinformatics has become a dynamically developed field of computer assisted biological data analysis.

This book is a great reference tool for scientists who deal with problems of designing and implementing processing tools employed in systems that assist the radiologists and biologists in patient data analysis.