Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering (ICETE), held at University College of Engineering and organised by the Alumni Association, University College of Engineering, Osmania University, in Hyderabad, India on 22–23 March 2019. The proceedings of the ICETE are published in three volumes, covering seven areas: Biomedical, Civil, Computer Science, Electrical & Electronics, Electronics & Communication, Mechanical, and Mining Engineering. The 215 peer-reviewed papers from around the globe present the latest state-of-the-art research, and are useful to postgraduate students, researchers, academics and industry engineers working in the respective fields. Volume 1 presents papers on the theme “Advances in Decision Sciences, Image Processing, Security and Computer Vision – International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering (ICETE)”. It includes state-of-the-art technical contributions in the area of biomedical and computer science engineering, discussing sustainable developments in the field, such as instrumentation and innovation, signal and image processing, Internet of Things, cryptography and network security, data mining and machine learning.