Intended for nurses who would like to know more about the development of the computerized information systems on which they have become so dependent, Nursing and Computers: An Anthology is a wide-range introduction to the literature of this field. The editors have selected historical and contemporary papers to show both the systems at their inception and examples of how they have evolved. Of interest to both the generalist and the specialist, these articles examine the partnership between nurses and computers in the areas of administration, practice, research, and education.

This series in Computers and Medicine had its origins when I met Jerry Stone of Springer-Verlag at a SCAMC meeting in 1982. We determined that there was a need for good collections of papers that would help disseminate the results of research and application in this field. I had already decided to do what is now Information Systems for Patient Care, and Jerry contributed the idea of making it part of a series. In 1984 the first book was published, and-thanks to Jerry's efforts - Computers and Medicine was underway. Since that time, there have been many changes. Sadly, Jerry died at a very early age and cannot share in the success of the series that he helped found. On the bright side, however, many of the early goals of the series have been met. As the result of equipment improvements and the consequent lowering of costs, com puters are being used in a growing number of medical applications, and the health care community is very computer literate. Thus, the focus of concern has turned from learning about the technology to understanding how that technology can be exploited in a medical environment."

A unified and coherent introduction to the notion of abstraction in interactive computer graphics is provided by this book. Abstraction entails refinement of images based on geometric models so as to reflect the importance of the features of the model for the dialog context and the visualization goal. This may require leaving out irrelevant details or accentuating significant features by adding details or enlarging or deforming parts. Such modifications are routine by hand but are at the leading edge of research in 2D and 3D computer graphics. The authors see the abstraction process as an interactive exploration of complex information spaces, and report especially on zooming and rendering techniques. Benefits are discussed for applications in medical illustration and technical documentation.

An International Conference on "Neurosurgical Training and Reserach" was held in Munich from October 6 - 9, 1996, under the auspices of the EANS, and organized by H.-J. Reulen and H.-J. Steiger. Experts from different countries and neurosurgical organizations have collected information on the present status of resident training in neurosurgery and the mechanisms involved with the training. Various aspects, the recruitment process, the criteria used for selection, the contents and structure of a program, the continuous quality control, exposition to the art of research, fellowships and subspeciality training, etc. have been covered. The present book contains this material and thus provides a unique and comprehensive source of information on the complex of modern neurosurgical training. " ... The beauty of this work is that it puts in one place the many varied aspects of a neurosurgical training program that one needs to be aware of ... should be required reading for the faculty of any academic training program as well as for others who may have a misconception of what residency training is ... an excellent book for any program director or active faculty member. It should be required reading for all faculty members before the next round of resident interviews ..." Neurosurgery "... well edited, published to a high standard and will naturally be of interest to those specifically involved in the areas of selection and training ... a useful text for aspirants to surgical training posts ..." British Journal of Neurosurgery

Microcomputer-based labs, the use of real-time data capture and display in teaching, give the learner new ways to explore and understand the world. As this book shows, the international effort over a quarter-century to develop and understand microcomputer-based labs (MBL) has resulted in a rich array of innovative implementations and some convincing evidence for the value of computers for learning. The book is a sampler of MBL work by an outstanding international group of scientists and educators, based on papers they presented at a seminar held as part of the NATO Special Programme on Advanced Educational Technology. The story they tell of the development of MBL offers valuable policy lessons on how to promote educational innovation. The book will be of interest to a wide range of educators and to policy makers.

Ever since the early 1960s, the medical ical records. Expert assistance in di- issue might contain a review of an office agnosis and treatment selection will be world has awaited the promise of com- practice management system-of in- as close as the nearest telephone, which terest to the physician, nurse, and office puterization. Many of us were fasci- will provide an immediate link to the nated by the efforts of the pioneers: practice manager. Next to it might be Homer Warner's computerized diag- office computer. found a detailed article about a language nosis system, Octo Barnett's medical Since 1983, M,D. Computing has such as LISP and how it could be ap- information system, Howard Bleich's explored and explained all of these as- plied to medical problems, or a tutorial pects. Our magazine's major focus is on about real-time monitoring of a patient's automated acid/base consultant" and Warner Slack's history-taking program computer systems that serve the health physiological state, along with book re- were foretastes of what was to come. provider in the home or office environ- views and departments reporting on At first, however, physicians and hos- ment. M. D, Computing has also ex- pertinent computer news. pital personnel resisted the computer amined more general computer appli- In several cases, a distinct theme because it was too slow, too fragile, too cations in medical care.

This series is intended for students and practitioners of the health profes sions who are seeking to expand their knowledge of computers in health care. Our editors and authors, experts in their fields, offer their insights into innovations and trends. Each book is practical and easy to use. Since the series began, in 1988, we have seen increasing acceptance of the term "informatics" and of the innovations it brings to health care. Today more than ever we are committed to making this series contribute to the field of healthcare informatics, the discipline "where caring and technology meet. " KATHRYN J. HANNAH MARION J. BALL v Preface Computer technology has transformed health care not only by improving the accuracy and quantity of information available to'clinicians, but also by improving the flow of information among the people who provide, arrange for, and pay for health services. This book is about the new computer networlcs that electronically link people and organizations in the health care field. Its purpose is to explore the impact of new computer networks upon the different organizations in the field, their services to patients, and the way in which organizations collaborate and compete, share information, and guard confidential material. The book explores computer networks primarily from the perspective of public health, discussing the impact that networks have upon communities as well as individuals."

This computer-based nomenclature aims to create a universal environment for the acquisition, review, and transmission of medical information independent of language. MEDCIN systemizes the diagnostic process, by removing the subjective variables of patient information gathering, allowing for a more consistent patient diagnosis, and more reliable data for research. Through a coding structure of hierarchical inheritance, MEDCIN accommodates the individual thought processes of the clinician, while remaining structured enough to capture the clinical findings needed for documentation and analysis. It also provides a universal language base for over 50,000 specific medical findings in French, German and Spanish, enabling the user to read patient chart data, irrespective of the language of acquisition.

This book reports cutting-edge cases of emerging health technologies.Some health care fields are experiencing paradigmatic shifts because of robotic technologies and the new relationships that they create in r-Health (r-Curing and r-Caring) activities.The book explores emerging health care technologies such as image-guided surgical robotics, pharmacy robots, new visualisation methods (3D, 4D & 5D ) and home telehealth management systems and their acceptance in the workplace but also, more generally, their special role in business and society. These technologies allow health care professionals to effectively reach far beyond the current service offerings, providing new methods for communication, diagnosis, and treatment. The relocation of certain knowledge areas from physicians to patients in self-care management or the reconfiguration of health care expertise from one health profession to another are examples of topics developed in this book. The book describes the emerging relocation of innovative visual knowledge and expertise within health care organisations and beyond, such as in the patient's home environment."

Biology education, like science education in general, is in the midst of a revolution that is worldwide in scope. The changes in the ways science education researchers think about learning and understanding represent a major paradigm shift. In this book, international leaders in the field of biology education research give summaries of problems and solutions in biology learning and teaching at various grade levels. Based on a NATO workshop in the Special Programme on Advanced Educational Technology, it provides practical information for teachers, especially in using new interactive, constructivist teaching methods. For science education researchers, it offers a concise summary of a number of research issues in biology education.

Medical imaging is an important and rapidly expanding area in medical science. Many of the methods employed are essentially digital, for example computerized tomography, and the subject has become increasingly influenced by develop ments in both mathematics and computer science. The mathematical problems have been the concern of a relatively small group of scientists, consisting mainly of applied mathematicians and theoretical physicists. Their efforts have led to workable algorithms for most imaging modalities. However, neither the fundamentals, nor the limitations and disadvantages of these algorithms are known to a sufficient degree to the physicists, engineers and physicians trying to implement these methods. It seems both timely and important to try to bridge this gap. This book summarizes the proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study Institute, on these topics, that was held in the mountains of Tuscany for two weeks in the late summer of 1986. At another (quite different) earlier meeting on medical imaging, the authors noted that each of the speakers had given, there, a long introduction in their general area, stated that they did not have time to discuss the details of the new work, but proceeded to show lots of clinical results, while excluding any mathematics associated with the area.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2011, held in Bled, Slovenia, in July 2011.

The 42 revised full and short papers presented together with 2 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 113 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on knowledge-based systems; data mining; special session on AI applications; probabilistic modeling and reasoning; terminologies and ontologies; temporal reasoning and temporal data mining; therapy planning, scheduling and guideline-based care; and natural language processing.

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique to support the capability of reasoning and learning in advanced decision support systems. CBR exploits the specific knowledge collected on previously encountered and solved situations, which are known as cases. In this book, we have collected a selection of papers on very recent CBR applications. These, after an in-depth analysis of their specific application domain needs, propose proper methodological solutions and give encouraging evaluation results, which have in some cases led to the commercialization step. The collected contributions demonstrate the capability of CBR to solve or handle issues which would be too difficult to manage with other classical AI methods and techniques, such as rules or models. The heterogeneity of the involved application domains indicates the flexibility of CBR, and its applicability in all those fields where experiential knowledge is (readily) available.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Ergonomics and Health Aspects of Work with Computers, EHAWC 2011, held within the framework of the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011, incorporating 12 thematically similar conferences. A total of 4039 contributions was submitted to HCII 2011, of which 1318 papers were accepted for publication. The 25 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. They are organized in topical sections on quality of working life; health and well-being; and interactive devices and interfaces.

Like many words, the term "immunomics" equates to different ideas contingent on context. For a brief span, immunomics meant the study of the Immunome, of which there were, in turn, several different definitions. A now largely defunct meaning rendered the Immunome as the set of antigenic peptides or immunogenic proteins within a single microorganism - be that virus, bacteria, fungus, or parasite - or microbial population, or antigenic or allergenic proteins and peptides derived from the environment as a whole, containing also proteins from eukaryotic sources. However, times have changed and the meaning of immunomics has also changed. Other newer definitions of the Immunome have come to focus on the plethora of immunological receptors and accessory molecules that comprise the host immune arsenal. Today, Immunomics or immunogenomics is now most often used as a synonym for high-throughput genome-based immunology. This is the study of aspects of the immune system using high-throughput techniques within a conc- tual landscape borne of both clinical and biophysical thinking.

This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Sensors and Sensory Systems for Advanced Robots", which was held in Maratea, Italy, during the week Apri I 28 - May 3, 1986. Participants in the ARW, who came from eleven NATO and two non-NATO countries, represented an i nternat i ona I assortment of d i st i ngu i shed research centers in industry, government and academia. Purpose of the Workshop was to rev i ew the state of the art of sensing for advanced robots, to discuss basic concepts and new ideas on the use of sensors for robot control and to provide recommendations for future research in this area, There IS an almost unanimous consensus among invest i gators in the fie I d of robot i cs that the add i t i on of sensory capabi I ities represents the "natural" evolution of present industrial robots, as wei I as the necessary premise to the development of advanced robots for nonindustrial app I i cat ions. However, a number of conceptua I and techn i ca I problems sti I I challenge the practical implementation and widespread appl ication of sensor-based robot control techn i ques. Cruc i a I among those prob I ems is the ava i lab iii ty of adequate sensors.

The continuing growth of computed tomography (CT) and other imaging techniques motivated us to bring together a comprehensive review of the state of the art in diagnostic imaging. Twelve years after the first appearance of x-ray CT, computerized diagnostic imaging has grown so rapidly in sophistication that it is difficult to follow current developments in this diversified field. In this book, we have attempted to cover the basic developments in several areas. The first part includes some of the fundamental aspects of computerized diagnostic imaging such as algorithms and detectors. Specific applications in emission tomography, digital radiography, ultrasound and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging are dealt with in the secondpart. The contributed papers are by experts currently in the field, whom we feel would certainly enlighten the subject matter and possibly suggest directions for future development. We would like to express our sincere thanks to those who have contributed to this volume. We are sure that their original papers will be beneficial for readers and will also remain as an important reference for researchers in the years to come. We would also like to thank Betty Trent for her expert and patient typing of the entire book. Finally, special thanks are due to Mrs. Ingeborg Mayer of Springer-Verlag for her encouragements, support and patience throughout the preparation of this book.

The three-volume set LNCS 7510, 7511, and 7512 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2012, held in Nice, France, in October 2012. Based on rigorous peer reviews, the program committee carefully selected 252 revised papers from 781 submissions for presentation in three volumes. The second volume includes 82 papers organized in topical sections on cardiovascular imaging: planning, intervention and simulation; image registration; neuroimage analysis; diffusion weighted imaging; image segmentation; computer-assisted interventions and robotics; and image registration: new methods and results.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2012, held in Linkoping, Sweden, in June 2012. The 21 full papers presented together with 5 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. In addition three keynote papers are included in this volume. The papers cover the typical fields of persuasive technology, such as health, safety and education."

Ziel des Workshops "Bildverarbeitung fur die Medizin" ist die Prasentation aktueller Forschungsergebnisse und die Vertiefung des Gesprachs zwischen Wissenschaftlern, Industrie und Anwendern. Die Beitrage dieses Bandes behandeln alle Bereiche der medizinischen Bildverarbeitung, darunter insbesondere die Themen molekulare Bildgebung, Animation, patientenindividuelle Simulation und Planung, computerunterstutzte Diagnose, biomechanische Modellierung, Bildverarbeitung in der Telemedizin, bildgestutzte Roboter und chirurgische Simulatoren.

Allen I. Laskin Biosciences Research Exxon Research and Engineering Company Linden, New Jersey I was contacted in the Fall of 1981 by Professors Martin Dworkin and Palmer Rogers, of the University of Minnesota and asked to participate in the orgnization of the 1983 conference in the series, "Interface Between Biology and Medicine." They and the other members of the advisory committee had the vision to realize that this was a time to depart somewhat from the traditional theme, since one of the major areas of interest in the biological and related sciences these days is that of biotechnology in a broader sense than its impact on medicine alone. In designing the format of the Conference, we considered another factor. There has been a plethora of conferences, symposia, and meetings on biotechnology over the past few years, and the faces and topics have become rather familiar. There has been a strong emphasis on the development of the technology and the "biotechnology industry"; less attention has been paid to the science behind it. One might get the impression from some of these meetings and from the popular press that biotechnology has just recently sprung up, apparently full blown; the very fundamental scientific discoveries and the great body of 1 ALLEN I. LASKIN 2 continuing research that forms that basis for the technology is often obscured.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the KR4HC 2010 workshop held at ECAI in Lisbon, Portugal, in August 2010. The 11 extended papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 19 submissions. The papers cover topics like ontologies, patient data, records, and guidelines, and clinical practice guidelines.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 4th International Conference, eHealth 2011, held in Malaga, Spain, in November 2011. The 20 revised full papers presented along with 8 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions in total and cover a wide range of topics including social media analysis, knowledge integration and EPR, personalisation and patient support systems, early warning systems and mobile monitoring, games and learning, security, privacy and prevention, online support for professionals and patients, agents in eHealth, online communities of practice, eHealth solutions, social media surveillance, and communication and data integration.

Dentistry today is changing because of new knowledge networks based on electronic technology. This book tells practitioners, administrators and educators what is happening in dentistry and how to use the full potential of new information technologies. Specifics such as existing machines, operating systems, software packages and user support groups are discussed. Aspects of standards for storage, access, and the use of information as well as its integration into the dental practice are covered. More general topics cover the impact of dental informatics on dentistry training programs, the dental manufacturing industries and insurance.

Computer technology has impacted the practice of medicine in dramatic ways. Imaging techniques provide noninvasive tools which alter the di agnostic process. Sophisticated monitoring equipment presents new levels of detail for both patient management and research. In most of these tech nology applications, the computer is embedded in the device; its presence is transparent to the user. There is also a growing number of applications in which the health care provider directly interacts with a computer. In many cases, these appli cations are limited to administrative functions, e.g., office practice man agement, location of hospital patients, appointments, and scheduling. Nevertheless, there also are instances of patient care functions such as results reporting, decision support, surveillance, and reminders. This series, Computers and Medicine, will focus upon the direct use of information systems as it relates to the medical community. After twenty-five years of experimentation and experience, there are many tested applications which can be implemented economically using the current generation of computers. Moreover, the falling cost of computers suggests that there will be even more extensive use in the near future. Yet there is a gap between current practice and the state-of-the-art."