Developments in bioengineering and medical technology have led to spectacular progress in clinical medicine. As a result, increased numbers of courses are available in the area of bioengineering and clinical technology. These often include modules dealing with basic biological and medical sciences, aimed at those taking up these studies, who have a background in engineering. To date, relatively few participants from medicine have taken up courses in biomedical engineering, to the detriment of scientific exchange between engineers and medics. The European Society for Engineering and Medicine (ESEM) aims to bridge the gap between engineering and medicine and biology. It promotes cultural and scientific exchanges between the engineering and the medical/biological fields. This primer consists of a series of First Step chapters in engineering and is principally presented for those with a medical or biology background who intend to start a MSc programme in biomedical engineering, and for medics or biologists who wish to better understand a particular technology. It will also serve as a reference for biomedical engineers. Written by engineers and medics who are leaders in their field, it covers the basic engineering principles underpinning: biomechanics, bioelectronics, medical informatics, biomaterials, tissue engineering, bioimaging and rehabilitation engineering. It also includes clinically relevant examples.

The US healthcare system has many excellent components; strong scientific input, extraordinary technology for diagnosis and treatment, dedicated staff and top-class facilities among them. But the system has evolved haphazardly over time and although it has not failed entirely, the authors argue that like any system where attention, is paid to individual components at the expense of the system as a whole, it can never hope to succeed. Above all, they point out that the US system does not provide high value healthcare; it has the highest costs in the world and yet many other countries have lower infant mortality rates and better life expectancy. --

Some of the topics presented include: system design and evaluation, computer assisted learning, knowledge representation and ontologies, electronic health records and patient empowerment. --

This book presents the proceedings of HealthGrid 2010, the latest in the annual open forum for the integration of grid technologies, e science and e health methods and their application in biomedicine and healthcare. Previous conferences have highlighted the need to involve all actors, such as physicians, scientists and technologists, and have served to demonstrate the usefulness of grids to potential application domains, at least at the prototype level. More recently, cloud computing seems set to make an impact as a paradigm more readily acceptable in the practice of healthcare informatics, whilst grids may remain the infrastructure of choice for researchers. Included in this volume are the 19 papers selected after review from 42 original submissions for full presentation at the 2010 conference. Additional papers, presented as posters at the conference, are reproduced here in shorter form. The book has four sections: section one contains four papers under the broad heading of `Socio Economic Aspects and Accessibility', section two: `Future of Grids, Core Technologies & Data Integration', consists of nine papers and section three comprises a further six papers covering `Applications'. Section four includes the `Poster Extended Abstracts'. Of interest to grid middleware and healthgrid application developers, ethicists, security experts and policy makers as well as all users of biomedical and health informatics, this book provides an overview of current trends and developments in this increasingly important field of healthcare.

Telehealth -- the delivery of health services and clinical information from a distance -- has reached new levels with the communication revolution of the last decade: consumer videoconferencing, mobile devices, high bandwidth infrastructure and close range wireless sensor networks have made many advances possible in the field. New specialized clinical applications and markets have also emerged. These include tele-homecare, tele-rehabilitation and tele-emergency, surveillance and disaster response, while ideas which once seemed futuristic, such as tele-procedures and tele-surgery, are now seen as being within the realms of possibility. This book contains selected papers from the 2010 Global Telehealth conference, hosted by the Australasian Telehealth Society. They cover a broad spectrum, from successfully completed projects to work in progress. The papers chosen for publication are all deemed to have lasting value, and to capture the international diversity and scope of contemporary telehealth developments. Two aspects which remain elusive in advancing telehealth deployment, both in developed countries and the developing world, are widely accepted evidence for the clinical and economic benefits of telehealth and the development of policy and business modeling drivers which will speed their adoption. The studies presented here exemplify precisely the type of work required to overcome these obstacles and the book will be of interest to all those involved in advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare throughout the world.

Of the 28 submitted papers presented here, seven deal with patient safety, eight address various topics of system design, six cover the subject of implementation and four explore patient involvement. The remaining three papers cover the theme of the conference in a broader perspective. --

This book describes these exciting new developments, and presents experimental and computational findings that altogether describe the frontier of knowledge in cellular and biomolecular mechanics, and the biological implications, in health and disease. The book is written for bioengineers with interest in cellular mechanics, for biophysicists, biochemists, medical researchers and all other professionals with interest in how cells produce and respond to mechanical loads.