Active and Assisted Living (AAL) systems aim at improving the quality of life and supporting independent and healthy living of older or impaired people by using a distributed network of sensors and actuators to create a ubiquitous technological layer, able to interact transparently with the users, observing and interpreting their actions and intentions, learning their preferences and adjusting the parameters of the system to improve their quality of life and work. This book provides a comprehensive review of the technologies and applications for AAL.

Advances in telemedicine technologies have offered clinicians greater levels of real-time guidance and technical assistance for diagnoses, monitoring, operations or interventions from colleagues based in remote locations. The topic includes the use of videoconferencing, mentorship during surgical procedures, or machine-to-machine communication to process data from one location by programmes running in another.

Machine learning algorithms are increasingly finding applications in the healthcare sector. Whether assisting a clinician to process an individual patient's data or helping administrators view hospital bed turnover, the volume and complexity of healthcare data is a compelling reason for the development of machine learning based tools to aid in its interpretation and use.

The expansion of telehealth services is enabling healthcare professionals to consult, diagnose, advise or perform tasks remotely, enabling them to treat more patients in their own homes or consult on cases on the other side of the world. The security of sensitive user information is critical to effective and efficient delivery of healthcare services. Artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology are identified as key drivers of emerging telehealth systems, enabling efficient delivery of telehealth services to billions of patients globally. Specifically, AI facilitates the processing and analysis of complex telehealth data, and blockchain technology offers decentralised, transparent, traceable, reliable, trustful, and provable security to telehealth systems.

Bioelectromagnetics in Healthcare: Advanced sensing and communication applications is a collection of twelve invited chapters from international experts from the UK, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States of America. The book forms a cohesive architecture that covers the state-of-the-art in terms of sensing and communications with relevance to bioelectromagnetics in healthcare. The book provides a valuable insight into the current and future possibilities where electromagnetics engineers will need to keep improving radiofrequency device performance in terms of better efficiency, greater sensitivity, reduced unintended power absorption by the body, smaller size, and lower power consumption.

Robotic exoskeletons that allow stroke survivors to regain use of their limbs, 3D-printed replacement body parts, and dozens of other innovations still in schematic design are revolutionizing the treatment of debilitating injuries and nervous system disorders. What all these technologies have in common is that they are modeled after engineering strategies found in nature—strategies developed by a vast array of organisms over eons of evolutionary trial and error.

Eugene Goldfield lays out many principles of engineering found in the natural world, with a focus on how evolutionary and developmental adaptations, such as sensory organs and spinal cords, function within complex organisms. He shows how the component parts of highly coordinated structures organize themselves into autonomous functional systems. For example, when people walk, spinal cord neurons generate coordinated signals that continuously reorganize patterns of muscle activations during the gait cycle. This self-organizing capacity is just one of many qualities that allow biological systems to be robust, adaptive, anticipatory, and self-repairing. To exploit the full potential of technologies designed to interact seamlessly with human bodies, properties like these must be better understood and harnessed at every level, from molecules to cells to organ systems.

Bioinspired Devices brings together insights from a wide range of fields. A member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Goldfield offers an insider’s view of cutting-edge research, and envisions a future in which synthetic and biological devices share energy sources and control, blurring the boundary between nature and medicine.

Nanomaterials are able to penetrate nanoscale pores of tissues, possess prolonged circulation, enter cells, and have increased surface area per volume allowing for greater drug loading. For these reasons, nanomaterials are finding numerous uses in medicine including fighting cancer, promoting tissue regeneration, reversing aging, inhibiting infection, limiting inflammation or scar tissue growth, and many others.

The healthcare arena has seen a shift in recent years, with more healthcare provisions being delivered or managed via electronic means. Healthcare providers can now provide patients with diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, or a prescription without ever sharing the same physical space. With so much more patient data now stored and accessed electronically, the security of this information is ever more critical to the delivery of effective and efficient healthcare services. As blockchains are resistant to modification of their data, blockchain technology therefore provides traceable and reliable security to e-Healthcare systems and services.

This edited book brings together research from laboratories across the world, in order to offer a global perspective on advances in prosthetic hand control. State-of-the-art control of prosthetics in the laboratory and clinical spaces are presented and the challenges discussed, and the effect of user training on control of prosthetics to evaluate the translational efficacy and value for the end-user is highlighted.

Medical images, in various formats, are used by clinicians to identify abnormalities or markers associated with certain conditions, such as cancers, diseases, abnormalities or other adverse health conditions. Deep learning algorithms use vast volumes of data to train the computer to recognise certain features in the images that are associated with the disease or condition that you wish to identify.

While digital transformations are happening in all walks of society and business, there is real potential for improving the quality of life of the elderly using digital methods and tools. Digital health promises to deliver better healthcare quality cost-efficiently to more people, especially in the case of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes. It will achieve this by combining the benefits of telehealth, eHealth, data-driven personalised healthcare, and evidence-based care. This book presents a discussion of evolving digital technologies, such as smart phones and assisted living, and innovative digitally based services that are helping improve the quality and cost of healthcare for the elderly.

Electroencephalography (EEG) is an electrophysiological monitoring method used to record the brain activity in brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. It records the electrical activity of the brain, is typically non-invasive with electrodes placed along the scalp, requires relatively simple and inexpensive equipment, and is easier to use than other methods.

Electromagnetic waves have long been used in medical settings for diagnostic purposes, such as for the detection of cancerous tissues, stroke events or cardiovascular risk, as the behaviour of the waves upon meeting their target gives pertinent information for diagnostic and imaging purposes.

No longer confined to medical devices, medical software has become a pervasive technology giving healthcare operators access to clinical information stored in electronic health records and clinical decision support systems, supporting robot-assisted telesurgery, and providing the technology behind ambient assisted living. These systems and software must be designed, built and maintained according to strict regulations and standards to ensure that they are safe, reliable and secure.

Enhanced living environments employ information and communications technologies to support true ambient assisted living for adults and people with disabilities. This book provides an overview of today's architectures, techniques, protocols, components, and cloud-based solutions related to ambient assisted living and enhanced living environments. Topics covered include: an introduction to enhanced living environments; pervasive sensing for social connectedness; ethics in information and communication technologies; service scenarios in smart personal environments; technological support to stress level monitoring; big data systems to improve healthcare information searching over the Internet; sensors for wireless body area networks; linear wireless sensor networks and protocols in next generation networks; model-compilation challenges for cyber-physical systems; health monitoring using wireless body area networks; wearable health care; and intelligent systems for after-stroke home rehabilitation.

A major use of practical predictive analytics in medicine has been in the diagnosis of current diseases, particularly through medical imaging. Now there is sufficient improvement in AI, IoT and data analytics to deal with real time problems with an increased focus on early prediction using machine learning and deep learning algorithms. With the power of artificial intelligence alongside the internet of 'medical' things, these algorithms can input the characteristics/data of their patients and get predictions of future diagnoses, classifications, treatment and costs.

Medical decision support systems (MDSS) are computer-based programs that analyse data within a patient's healthcare records to provide questions, prompts, or reminders to assist clinicians at the point of care. Inputting a patient's data, symptoms, or current treatment regimens into an MDSS, clinicians are assisted with the identification or elimination of the most likely potential medical causes, which can enable faster discovery of a set of appropriate diagnoses or treatment plans. Explainable AI (XAI) is a "white box" model of artificial intelligence in which the results of the solution can be understood by the users, who can see an estimate of the weighted importance of each feature on the model's predictions, and understand how the different features interact to arrive at a specific decision.

This edited book explores the field of quantum computing and machine learning for medical data processing. Topics such as security, transparency, data integrity, big data and applications in drug discovery, precision in diagnostics and precision medicine, are explored.

From a journalist and former lab researcher, a penetrating investigation of the explosion in cases of scientific fraud and the factors behind it.

In the 1970s, a scientific scandal about painted mice hit the headlines. A cancer researcher was found to have deliberately falsified his experiments by coloring transplanted mouse skin with ink. This widely publicized case of scientific misconduct marked the beginning of an epidemic of fraud that plagues the scientific community today.

From manipulated results and made-up data to retouched illustrations and plagiarism, cases of scientific fraud have skyrocketed in the past two decades, especially in the biomedical sciences. Fraud in the Lab examines cases of scientific misconduct around the world and asks why this behavior is so pervasive. Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis points to large-scale trends that have led to an environment of heightened competition, extreme self-interest, and emphasis on short-term payoffs. Because of the move toward highly specialized research, fewer experts are qualified to verify experimental findings. And the pace of journal publishing has exacerbated the scientific rewards system—publish or perish holds sway more than ever. Even when instances of misconduct are discovered, researchers often face few consequences, and falsified data may continue to circulate after an article has been retracted.

Sharp and damning, this exposé details the circumstances that have allowed scientific standards to decline. Fraud in the Lab reveals the intense social pressures that lead to fraud, documents the lasting impact it has had on the scientific community, and highlights recent initiatives and proposals to reduce the extent of misconduct in the future.

Research powers innovation and technoscientific advance, but it is due for a rethink, one consistent with its deeply holistic nature, requiring deeply human nurturing.

Research is a deeply human endeavor that must be nurtured to achieve its full potential. As with tending a garden, care must be taken to organize, plant, feed, and weed—and the manner in which this nurturing is done must be consistent with the nature of what is being nurtured.

In The Genesis of Technoscientific Revolutions, Venkatesh Narayanamurti and Jeffrey Tsao propose a new and holistic system, a rethinking of the nature and nurturing of research. They share lessons from their vast research experience in the physical sciences and engineering, as well as from perspectives drawn from the history and philosophy of science and technology, research policy and management, and the evolutionary biological, complexity, physical, and economic sciences.

Narayanamurti and Tsao argue that research is a recursive, reciprocal process at many levels: between science and technology; between questions and answer finding; and between the consolidation and challenging of conventional wisdom. These fundamental aspects of the nature of research should be reflected in how it is nurtured. To that end, Narayanamurti and Tsao propose aligning organization, funding, and governance with research; embracing a culture of holistic technoscientific exploration; and instructing people with care and accountability.

IoT-enabled healthcare technologies can be used for remote health monitoring, rehabilitation assessment and assisted ambient living. Healthcare analytics can be applied to the data gathered from these different areas to improve healthcare outcomes by providing clinicians with real-world, real-time data so they can more easily support and advise their patients.

Interest in Information and Communication Technologies for human monitoring, smart health and assisted living is growing due to the significant impact that these technologies are expected to have on improving the quality of life of ageing populations around the world. This book brings together chapters written by a range of researchers working in these topics, providing an overview of the areas and covering current research, developments and applications for a readership of researchers and research-led engineering practitioners. It discusses the promises and the possible advantages of these technologies, and also indicates the challenges for the future.

Improved computing technology combined with IoT-enabled smart devices and the digitization of personal health records (PHRs) has created vast quantities of patient data in recent years. The availability of this data and new processing methods are enabling clinicians to provide better care for patients and has sparked a growing interest in consumer health informatics (CHI) and in the potential of patient-generated health data (PGHD).

This is the age of biomechatronics, a time where mechanics and electronics can interact with human muscle, skeleton, and nervous systems to assist or replace limbs, senses, and even organs damaged by trauma, birth defects, or disease. Introduction to Biomechatronics provides biomedical engineering students and professionals with the fundamental mechatronic (mechanics, electronics, robotics) engineering knowledge they need to analyze and design devices that improve lives. The first half of the book provides the engineering background to understand all the components of a biomechatronic system: the human subject, stimulus or actuation, transducers and sensors, signal conditioning elements, recording and display, and feedback elements. It also includes the major functional systems of the body to which biomechatronics can be applied including: biochemical, nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, and musculoskeletal. The second half discusses five broadly based inventions from a historical perspective and supported by the relevant technical detail and engineering analysis. It begins with the development of hearing prostheses including middle-ear implantable hearing devices and the amazingly successful cochlear implant. This is followed by sensory substitution and visual prostheses that researchers hope will do the same for the blind as the cochlear implant has done for the deaf. The last three chapters are more mechatronic in focus, examining artificial hearts, respiratory aids from the iron lung to the latest CPAP devices, and finally artificial limbs from the first hooks and peg legs to limbs that move and have a sense of touch.

This book provides a snapshot of the state of current research at the interface between machine learning and healthcare with special emphasis on machine learning projects that are (or are close to) achieving improvement in patient outcomes. The book provides overviews on a range of technologies including detecting artefactual events in vital signs monitoring data; patient physiological monitoring; tracking infectious disease; predicting antibiotic resistance from genomic data; and managing chronic disease.

Medical images can highlight differences between healthy tissue and unhealthy tissue and these images can then be assessed by a healthcare professional to identify the stage and spread of a disease so a treatment path can be established. With machine learning techniques becoming more prevalent in healthcare, algorithms can be trained to identify healthy or unhealthy tissues and quickly differentiate between the two. Statistical models can be used to process numerous images of the same type in a fraction of the time it would take a human to assess the same quantity, saving time and money in aiding practitioners in their assessment.

The evolution of medical equipment engineering is progressing rapidly, with advances in digital healthcare technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, 3D-printing, robotics and nanotechnologies developing at pace. Medical equipment engineering can assist in surveying workplace inefficiencies, and develop efficient optimisation processes, through data research and intelligent learning automation. This edited book covers the benefits of the integration of lean manufacturing, smart sensors, 5G technology, IoTs, virtual reality, 3D printing, robotics and automation.

This edited book explores the use of mobile technologies such as phones, drones, robots, apps, and wearable monitoring devices for improving access to healthcare for socially disadvantaged populations in remote, rural or developing regions. This book brings together examples of large scale, international projects from developing regions of China and Belt and Road countries from researchers in Australia, Bangladesh, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Spain, Thailand and China. The chapters discuss the challenges presented to those seeking to deploy emerging mobile technologies (e.g., smartphones, IoT, drones, robots etc.) for healthcare (mHealth) in developing countries and discuss the solutions undertaken in these case study projects.

Nanobiosensors have been successful for in vitro as well as in vivo detection of several biomolecules and it is expected that this technology will revolutionize point-of-care and personalized diagnostics, and will be extremely applicable for early disease detection and therapeutic applications. This book describes the emerging nanobiosensor technologies which are geared towards onsite clinical applications and those which can be used as a personalised diagnostic device. Biosensor technologies and materials covered include electrochemical biosensors; implantable microbiosensors; microfluidic technology; surface plasmon resonance-based technologies; optical and fibre-optic sensors; lateral flow biosensors; lab on a chip; nanomaterials based (graphene, nanoparticles, nanocomposites, and other carbon nanomaterial) sensors; metallic nanobiosensors; wearable and doppler-based non-contact vital signs biosensors; and technologies for smartphone based disease diagnosis. Clinical applications of these technologies covered in this book include detection of various protein biomarkers, small molecules, cancer and bacterial cells; detection of foodborne pathogens; generation and optimisation of antibodies for biosensor applications; microRNAs and their applications in diagnosis for osteoarthritis; detection of circulating tumor cells; online heartbeat monitoring; analysis of drugs in body fluids; sensing of nucleic acids; and monitoring oxidative stress.

Patient-Centered Digital Healthcare Technology explores the creative intersection of novel, emerging technologies and medicine. This convergence is transforming the landscape of healthcare with the overarching objectives of improving clinical outcomes and advocating wellness. The concept of encountering or treating a medical condition when it has already become disturbingly manifest is being replaced by earlier awareness, diagnosis, and proactive intervention enabled by technologies.

Portable Biosensors and Point-of-Care Systems describes the principles, design and applications of a new generation of analytical and diagnostic biomedical devices, characterized by their very small size, ease of use, multi-analytical capabilities and speed to provide handheld and mobile point-of-care (POC) diagnostics.

Semiconductor lasers are small, reliable, low cost, high-performance and user-friendly optical devices which make them highly suitable for a variety of biomedical applications.

Smart Health Technologies for the COVID-19 Pandemic: Internet of medical things perspectives looks at the role technology has played to monitor, map and fight the global COVID-19 pandemic. Chapters outline risk assessment methodologies and social distancing and infection control technologies in the face of this disease outbreak.

Robot-assisted healthcare offers benefits for repetitive, intensive and task specific training compared to traditional manual manipulation performed by physiotherapists. However, a majority of existing rehabilitation devices use rigid actuators such as electric motors or hydraulic cylinders which cannot guarantee the safety of patients; novel soft robots combining soft and compliant actuators with stiff skeletons offer a better alternative. This book focuses on the development of these soft robotics for rehabilitation purposes.

Gait analysis is the study of the walking or running pattern of an individual. This can include spatial and temporal measurements such as step length, stride length and speed along with angular measurements of various joints and the interplay between various parts like the foot, hip, pelvis or spine when walking. Gait analysis can be used to assess clinical conditions and design effective rehabilitation; for example, following limb injury or amputation, or other disorders such as a stroke or Parkinson's diagnosis. It can be used to influence intervention decisions, such as whether a patient should undergo surgery, further physiotherapy, or begin a particular treatment regime. Gait analysis can also be used in sports science to monitor and review performance and technique.

There are a growing number of challenges in handling medical data in order to provide an effective healthcare service in real-time. Bridging the gap between patient expectations and their experiences needs effective collaboration and connectivity across the healthcare ecosystem. The success of joined-up care relies on patient data being shared between all active stakeholders, including hospitals, outreach workers, and GPs. All these needs and challenges pave the way for the next trend of development in healthcare - healthcare 4.0.

Documenting how technology has been increasingly facilitating rehabilitation both for physical and mental health, this book focuses on sensing and measurement technologies for rehabilitation applications.

Achieving value-based healthcare, increasing quality, reducing cost, and spreading access, has proven to be extremely challenging, in part due to research that is siloed and largely focused on singular risk factors, ineffective care coordination resulting from service fragmentation, and costly unintended consequences of reform that have emerged due to the complexity of healthcare systems. Understanding the behaviour of the overall system is becoming a major concern among healthcare managers and decision-makers intent on increasing value for their systems.

Continuous advances in wearables, sensors and smart Wireless Body Area Network technologies have precipitated the development of new applications for on-, in- and body-to-body wearable communications for healthcare and sport monitoring. Progress in this cross-disciplinary field is further influenced by developments in radio communication, protocols, synchronization aspects, energy harvesting and storage solutions, and efficient processing techniques for smart antennas.