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Affective Computing Applications using Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
Methods, approaches and challenges in system design
M. Murugappan
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2024
Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognise human emotions. This can be done using sensing technologies and AI algorithms to process biological signals or facial images to identify the different affective states, such as happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness and disgust. This non-invasive technique has applications in healthcare such as emotional impairment detection, mental health assessment, emotional stress assessment, cognitive decline detection, attention deficit disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, neurological disorders, autism spectrum disorder, stress, anxiety or other behavioural assessment.
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front cover of American Journal of Health Economics, volume 10 number 1 (Winter 2024)
American Journal of Health Economics, volume 10 number 1 (Winter 2024)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2024
This is volume 10 issue 1 of American Journal of Health Economics. The American Journal of Health Economics (AJHE) provides a forum for the in-depth analysis of health care markets and individual health behaviors. The articles appearing in AJHE are authored by scholars from universities, private research organizations, government, and industry. Subjects of interest include competition among private insurers, hospitals, and physicians; impacts of public insurance programs; pharmaceutical innovation and regulation; medical device supply; the rise of obesity and its consequences; the influence and growth of aging populations; and much more. The journal is published for the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), which is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States.
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American Journal of Health Economics, volume 8 number 3 (Summer 2022)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2022

front cover of American Journal of Health Economics, volume 8 number 4 (Fall 2022)
American Journal of Health Economics, volume 8 number 4 (Fall 2022)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2022
This is volume 8 issue 4 of American Journal of Health Economics. The American Journal of Health Economics (AJHE) provides a forum for the in-depth analysis of health care markets and individual health behaviors. The articles appearing in AJHE are authored by scholars from universities, private research organizations, government, and industry. Subjects of interest include competition among private insurers, hospitals, and physicians; impacts of public insurance programs; pharmaceutical innovation and regulation; medical device supply; the rise of obesity and its consequences; the influence and growth of aging populations; and much more. The journal is published for the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), which is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States.
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front cover of American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 1 (Winter 2023)
American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 1 (Winter 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 9 issue 1 of American Journal of Health Economics. The American Journal of Health Economics (AJHE) provides a forum for the in-depth analysis of health care markets and individual health behaviors. The articles appearing in AJHE are authored by scholars from universities, private research organizations, government, and industry. Subjects of interest include competition among private insurers, hospitals, and physicians; impacts of public insurance programs; pharmaceutical innovation and regulation; medical device supply; the rise of obesity and its consequences; the influence and growth of aging populations; and much more. The journal is published for the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), which is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States.
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front cover of American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 2 (Spring 2023)
American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 2 (Spring 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 9 issue 2 of American Journal of Health Economics. The American Journal of Health Economics (AJHE) provides a forum for the in-depth analysis of health care markets and individual health behaviors. The articles appearing in AJHE are authored by scholars from universities, private research organizations, government, and industry. Subjects of interest include competition among private insurers, hospitals, and physicians; impacts of public insurance programs; pharmaceutical innovation and regulation; medical device supply; the rise of obesity and its consequences; the influence and growth of aging populations; and much more. The journal is published for the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), which is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States.
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front cover of American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 3 (Summer 2023)
American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 3 (Summer 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 9 issue 3 of American Journal of Health Economics. The American Journal of Health Economics (AJHE) provides a forum for the in-depth analysis of health care markets and individual health behaviors. The articles appearing in AJHE are authored by scholars from universities, private research organizations, government, and industry. Subjects of interest include competition among private insurers, hospitals, and physicians; impacts of public insurance programs; pharmaceutical innovation and regulation; medical device supply; the rise of obesity and its consequences; the influence and growth of aging populations; and much more. The journal is published for the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), which is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States.
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front cover of American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 4 (Fall 2023)
American Journal of Health Economics, volume 9 number 4 (Fall 2023)
The University of Chicago Press
University of Chicago Press Journals, 2023
This is volume 9 issue 4 of American Journal of Health Economics. The American Journal of Health Economics (AJHE) provides a forum for the in-depth analysis of health care markets and individual health behaviors. The articles appearing in AJHE are authored by scholars from universities, private research organizations, government, and industry. Subjects of interest include competition among private insurers, hospitals, and physicians; impacts of public insurance programs; pharmaceutical innovation and regulation; medical device supply; the rise of obesity and its consequences; the influence and growth of aging populations; and much more. The journal is published for the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), which is a professional, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the United States.
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front cover of Better Health Economics
Better Health Economics
An Introduction for Everyone
Tal Gross and Matthew J. Notowidigdo
University of Chicago Press, 2024

An ideal entry point into health economics for everyone from aspiring economists to healthcare professionals.

The economics of healthcare are messy. For most consumers, there’s little control over costs or services. Sometimes doctors are paid a lot; other times they aren’t paid at all. Insurance and drug companies are evil, except when they’re not. If economics is the study of market efficiency, how do we make sense of this?

Better Health Economics is a warts-and-all introduction to a field that is more exceptions than rules. Economists Tal Gross and Matthew J. Notowidigdo offer readers an accessible primer on the field’s essential concepts, a review of the latest research, and a framework for thinking about this increasingly imperfect market.

A love letter to a traditionally unlovable topic, Better Health Economics provides an ideal entry point for students in social science, business, public policy, and healthcare. It’s a reminder that healthcare may be a failed market—but it’s our failed market.

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Big Med
Megaproviders and the High Cost of Health Care in America
David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns
University of Chicago Press, 2021
There is little debate that health care in the United States is in need of reform. But where should those improvements begin? With insurers? Drug makers? The doctors themselves? In Big Med, David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns argue that we’re overlooking the most ubiquitous cause of our costly and underperforming system: megaproviders, the expansive health care organizations that have become the face of American medicine. Your local hospital is likely part of one. Your doctors, too. And the megaproviders are bad news for your health and your wallet.

Drawing on decades of combined expertise in health care consolidation, Dranove and Burns trace Big Med’s emergence in the 1990s, followed by its swift rise amid false promises of scale economies and organizational collaboration. In the decades since, megaproviders have gobbled up market share and turned independent physicians into salaried employees of big bureaucracies, while delivering on none of their early promises. For patients this means higher costs and lesser care. Meanwhile, physicians report increasingly low morale, making it all but impossible for most systems to implement meaningful reforms.

In Big Med, Dranove and Burns combine their respective skills in economics and management to provide a nuanced explanation of how the provision of health care has been corrupted and submerged under consolidation. They offer practical recommendations for improving competition policies that would reform megaproviders to actually achieve the efficiencies and quality improvements they have long promised.
This is an essential read for understanding the current state of the health care system in America—and the steps urgently needed to create an environment of better care for all of us.
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front cover of Big Med
Big Med
Megaproviders and the High Cost of Health Care in America
David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns
University of Chicago Press, 2021

This is an auto-narrated audiobook edition of this book.

There is little debate that health care in the United States is in need of reform. But where should those improvements begin? With insurers? Drug makers? The doctors themselves? In Big Med, David Dranove and Lawton Robert Burns argue that we’re overlooking the most ubiquitous cause of our costly and underperforming system: megaproviders, the expansive health care organizations that have become the face of American medicine. Your local hospital is likely part of one. Your doctors, too. And the megaproviders are bad news for your health and your wallet.

Drawing on decades of combined expertise in health care consolidation, Dranove and Burns trace Big Med’s emergence in the 1990s, followed by its swift rise amid false promises of scale economies and organizational collaboration. In the decades since, megaproviders have gobbled up market share and turned independent physicians into salaried employees of big bureaucracies, while delivering on none of their early promises. For patients this means higher costs and lesser care. Meanwhile, physicians report increasingly low morale, making it all but impossible for most systems to implement meaningful reforms.

In Big Med, Dranove and Burns combine their respective skills in economics and management to provide a nuanced explanation of how the provision of health care has been corrupted and submerged under consolidation. They offer practical recommendations for improving competition policies that would reform megaproviders to actually achieve the efficiencies and quality improvements they have long promised.
This is an essential read for understanding the current state of the health care system in America—and the steps urgently needed to create an environment of better care for all of us.

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Bioelectromagnetics in Healthcare
Advanced sensing and communication applications
William Whittow
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2022
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.
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The Burnout Challenge
Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs
Christina Maslach, Michael P. Leiter
Harvard University Press, 2022

A Forbes Best Business Book. “Vital reading for today’s and tomorrow’s leaders.” —Arianna Huffington

“Burnout seems to be everyone’s problem, and this book has solutions. As trailblazers in burnout research, Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter didn’t just clear the path to study the causes—they’ve also discovered some of the cures.” —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again

“A thoughtful and well researched book about a core issue at the heart of the great resignation.” —Christian Stadler, Forbes

“Provides the path to creating a better world of work where people can flourish rather than get beaten down.” — Marcel Schwantes, Inc.

Burnout is among the most significant on-the-job hazards facing workers today. It is also among the most misunderstood. In particular, we tend to characterize burnout as a personal issue—a problem employees should fix themselves by getting therapy, practicing relaxation techniques, or changing jobs. Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter show why burnout also needs to be managed by the workplace.

Citing a wealth of research data and drawing on illustrative anecdotes, The Burnout Challenge shows how organizations can change to promote sustainable productivity. Maslach and Leiter provide useful tools for identifying the signs of employee burnout and offer practical, evidence-driven guidance for implementing change. The key, they argue, is to begin with less-taxing changes that employees nonetheless find meaningful, seeding the ground for more thorough reforms in the future.

As priorities and policies shift across workplaces, The Burnout Challenge provides pragmatic, creative, and cost-effective solutions to improve employee efficiency, health, and happiness.

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Challenging Pregnancy
A Journey through the Politics and Science of Healthcare in America
Genevieve Grabman
University of Iowa Press, 2022
In Challenging Pregnancy, Genevieve Grabman recounts being pregnant with identical twins whose circulatory systems were connected in a rare condition called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Doctors couldn’t “unfuse” the fetuses because one twin also had several other confounding problems: selective intrauterine growth restriction, a two-vessel umbilical cord, a marginal cord insertion, and, possibly, a parasitic triplet.

Ultimately, national anti-abortion politics—not medicine or her own choices—determined the outcome of Grabman’s pregnancy. At every juncture, anti-abortion politics limited the care available to her, the doctors and hospitals willing to treat her, the tools doctors could use, and the words her doctors could say. Although she asked for aggressive treatment to save at least one baby, hospital ethics boards blocked all able doctors from helping her.

Challenging Pregnancy is about Grabman’s harrowing pregnancy and the science and politics of maternal healthcare in the United States, where every person must self-advocate for the desired outcome of their own pregnancy.
 
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Chasing Success
The Challenge for Nonprofits
Judith Van Ginkel
University of Cincinnati Press, 2023
A study of nonprofit administration, using the organization Every Child Succeeds as an example.

Chasing Success follows the first twenty years of the organization Every Child Succeeds under the leadership of their former Executive Director turned author, Judith Van Ginkel. Every Child Succeeds is a regional nonprofit located in Cincinnati, Ohio that focuses on home visitation and support for parents from pregnancy through the first one thousand days of their newborn’s life. The organization was born in the 1990s out of widespread scientific evidence about the impacts of early childhood on development across the lifespan.

Chasing Success uses the story of Every Child Succeeds as a case study for readers interested in the changing landscape of nonprofit administration. With the benefit of Van Ginkel’s years of experience in nonprofit management, this book offers concrete lessons about developing a new nonprofit, utilizing research and best practices, learning to be adaptable, and being accountable to stakeholders. Van Ginkel also explores how changing policies and funding priorities for larger national nonprofits and the state and federal governments can impact how regional nonprofits work to achieve their missions, an often underappreciated and under-discussed reality for many smaller organizations around the country.
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The Economics of Artificial Intelligence
Health Care Challenges
Edited by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb, and Catherine E. Tucker
University of Chicago Press, 2024

A timely investigation of the potential economic effects, both realized and unrealized, of artificial intelligence within the United States healthcare system.

In sweeping conversations about the impact of artificial intelligence on many sectors of the economy, healthcare has received relatively little attention. Yet it seems unlikely that an industry that represents nearly one-fifth of the economy could escape the efficiency and cost-driven disruptions of AI.

The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Health Care Challenges brings together contributions from health economists, physicians, philosophers, and scholars in law, public health, and machine learning to identify the primary barriers to entry of AI in the healthcare sector. Across original papers and in wide-ranging responses, the contributors analyze barriers of four types: incentives, management, data availability, and regulation. They also suggest that AI has the potential to improve outcomes and lower costs. Understanding both the benefits of and barriers to AI adoption is essential for designing policies that will affect the evolution of the healthcare system.

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Evolving Predictive Analytics in Healthcare
New AI techniques for real-time interventions
Abhishek Kumar
The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2022
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.
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Faith In The Future
Healthcare, Aging and the Role of Religion
Harold Koenig
Templeton Press, 2012

After an interview in Newsweek about his book Spirituality in Patient Care and his research in religion and health, Dr. Harold Koenig became the international voice on spirituality, health, and aging. In this book, Faith in the Future, he is joined by two other experts on aging and human development. They present a compelling look at one of the most severe issues in today’s society: health care in America. 

How will we provide quality healthcare to older adults needing it during the next thirty to fifty years? Who will provide this care? How will it be funded? How can we establish systems of care now to be in place as demographic and health-related economic pressures mount?

Alongside the sobering reality of our country’s challenges, there are reasons for optimism. Innovative programs created and maintained by volunteers and religious congregations are emerging as pivotal factors in meeting healthcare needs. Summarizing decades of scientific research and providing numerous inspirational examples and role models, the authors present practical steps that individuals and institutions may emulate for putting faith into action.

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First, Do No Harm
Power, Oppression, and Violence in Healthcare
Edited by Nancy L. Diekelmann
University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

    First, Do No Harm shows how health care professionals, with the best intentions of providing excellent, holistic health care, can nonetheless perpetuate violence against vulnerable patients. The essays investigate the need to rethink contemporary healthcare practices in ways that can bring the art and science of medicine back into sorely needed balance.
    These ground-breaking studies by noted scholars question commonly held assumptions in contemporary healthcare that underlie oppressive power dynamics and even violence for patients and their families. The contributors discuss such topics as women and violence, life-support technologies, and healthcare professionals’ own experiences as patients. First, Do No Harm opens the discourse for reaching new understandings, from reassessing the meaning of "quality of life" to questioning the appropriateness of the very language used by healthcare professionals. It will be welcomed by healthcare workers and by scholars in nursing, medicine, and the allied health sciences.

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Healthcare and Human Dignity
Law Matters
Frank M. McClellan
Rutgers University Press, 2020
The individual and structural biases that affect the American healthcare system have serious emotional and physical consequences that all too often go unseen. These biases are often rooted in power, class, racial, gender or sexual orientation prejudices, and as a result, the injured parties usually lack the resources needed to protect themselves. In Healthcare and Human Dignity, individual worth, equality, and autonomy emerge as the dominant values at stake in encounters with doctors, nurses, hospitals, and drug companies. Although the public is aware of legal battles over autonomy and dignity in the context of death, the everyday patient’s need for dignity has received scant attention.  Thus, in Healthcare, law professor Frank McClellan’s collection of cases and individual experiences bring these stories to life and establish beyond doubt that human dignity is of utmost priority in the everyday process of healthcare decision making.
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Healthcare in Ireland and Britain 1850-1970
Voluntary, regional and comparative perspectives
Edited by Donnacha Sean Lucey and Virginia Crossman
University of London Press, 2015
This volume explores developments in health and social care in Ireland and Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The central objectives are to highlight the role of voluntarism in healthcare, to examine healthcare in local and regional contexts, and to provide comparative perspectives. The collection is based on two interconnected and overlapping research themes: voluntarism and healthcare, and regionalism/localism and healthcare. It includes two synoptic overviews by leading authorities in the field, and ten case studies focusing on particular aspects of voluntary and/or regional healthcare in Ireland and Britain.
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Listening to the Whispers
Re-thinking Ethics in Healthcare
Edited by Christine Sorrell Dinkins and Jeanne Merkle Sorrell
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006

Listening to the Whispers gives voice to scholars in philosophy, medical anthropology, physical therapy, and nursing, helping readers re-think ethics across the disciplines in the context of today's healthcare system. Diverse voices, often unheard, challenge readers to enlarge the circle of their ethical concerns and look for hidden pathways toward new understandings of ethics. Essays range from a focus on the context of corporatization and managed care environments to a call for questioning the fundamental values of society as these values silently affect many others in healthcare. Each chapter is followed by a brief essay that highlights issues useful for scholarly research and classroom discussion. The conversations of interpretive research in healthcare contained in this volume encourage readers to re-think ethics in ways that will help to create an ethical healthcare system with a future of new possibilities.

Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

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The Next Shift
The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America
Gabriel Winant
Harvard University Press, 2021

Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award
Winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize
Winner of the C. L. R. James Award
A ProMarket Best Political Economy Book of the Year


Men in hardhats were once the heart of America’s working class; now it is women in scrubs. What does this shift portend for our future?

Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel. But today most of its mills are gone. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was a center of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by the service economy—particularly health care, which employs more Americans than any other industry. Gabriel Winant takes us inside the Rust Belt to show how America’s cities have weathered new economic realities. In Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, he finds that a new working class has emerged in the wake of deindustrialization.

As steelworkers and their families grew older, they required more health care. Even as the industrial economy contracted sharply, the care economy thrived. Hospitals and nursing homes went on hiring sprees. But many care jobs bear little resemblance to the manufacturing work the city lost. Unlike their blue-collar predecessors, home health aides and hospital staff work unpredictable hours for low pay. And the new working class disproportionately comprises women and people of color.

Today health care workers are on the front lines of our most pressing crises, yet we have been slow to appreciate that they are the face of our twenty-first-century workforce. The Next Shift offers unique insights into how we got here and what could happen next. If health care employees, along with other essential workers, can translate the increasing recognition of their economic value into political power, they may become a major force in the twenty-first century.

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The Next Shift
The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America
Gabriel Winant
Harvard University Press

Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award
Winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize
Winner of the C. L. R. James Award
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A ProMarket Best Political Economy Book of the Year


“The Next Shift is an original work of serious scholarship, but it’s also vivid and readable…Eye-opening.”
—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

“A deeply upsetting book…Winant ably blends social and political history with conventional labor history to construct a remarkably comprehensive narrative with clear contemporary implications.”
—Scott W. Stern, New Republic

“Terrific…A useful guide to the sweeping social changes that have shaped a huge segment of the economy and created the dystopian world of contemporary service-sector work.”
—Nelson Lichtenstein, The Nation

Pittsburgh was once synonymous with steel, but today most of its mills are gone. Like so many places across the United States, a city that was a center of blue-collar manufacturing is now dominated by health care, which employs more Americans than any other industry. Gabriel Winant takes us inside the Rust Belt to show how America’s cities have weathered new economic realities.

As steelworkers and their families grew older, they required more health care. Even as the industrial economy contracted sharply, the care economy thrived. But unlike their blue-collar predecessors, home health aides and hospital staff work unpredictable hours for low pay. Today health care workers—mostly women and people of color—are on the front lines of our most pressing crises, yet we have been slow to appreciate that they are the face of our twenty-first-century workforce. The Next Shift offers unique insights into how we got here and what could happen next.

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Nudging towards Health
A Tool to Influence Human Behavior in Health Policy
Radek Kovács and František Ochrana
Karolinum Press, 2023
An analysis of “nudging” as a tool for influencing human health behavior.

Behavioral economics sees “nudges” as ways to encourage people to re-evaluate their priorities in such a way that they voluntarily change their behavior, leading to personal and social benefits. This book examines nudging as a tool for influencing human behavior in health policy. The authors investigate the contemporary scientific discourse on nudging and enrich it with an ontological, epistemological, and praxeological analysis of human behavior. Based on analyses of the literature and a systemic review, the book defines nudging tools within the paradigm of prospect theory. In addition to the theoretical contribution, Nudging also examines and offers suggestions on the practice of health policy regarding obesity, malnutrition, and especially type 2 diabetes mellitus.
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Spiritual Caregiving
Healthcare As A Ministry
Verna Benner Carson
Templeton Press, 2004

With today's cumbersome insurance procedures, government regulations, endless paperwork, and concerns about malpractice rates, many health care professionals are asking: "Why am I doing this? Am I making a difference to my patients? Is there a better way—and if so, what is it?" In this book, Carson and Koenig examine the state of the health care system with the goal of providing healthcare professionals and caregivers the inspiration and practical tools to reclaim their sense of purpose.

The book begins with an evaluation of the current system from the perspective of the spiritual vision that initially motivated and nourished many caregivers. The authors then pose a vision of a health care system that supports and nurtures the spirituality of patients and their families, of which some elements already exist.

An overview is provided on the preparation necessary for health care professionals to offer spiritual care when there are major implications—for people with chronic illnesses, psychiatric issues, devastating injuries, and those preparing for surgery, facing death, and those living with chronic pain. Also explored are ways that health professionals and caregivers can maintain their own spiritual health even as they work to bring about healing, comfort, and solace to others.

Woven throughout the book are the personal narratives of physicians, nurses, chaplains, health care educators, community resource workers, administrators, therapists, and psychologists—all from a wide range of religious traditions. Their examples inspire and assist professionals in renewing the spiritual focus of health care.

 

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When Sickness Heals
The Place of Religious Belief in Healthcare
Siroj Sorajjakool
Templeton Press, 2006

 

In When Sickness Heals, Dr. Siroj Sorajjakool draws on more than ten years of studies on health benefits in relation to spirituality, especially focusing on the function of "meaning." He expounds on his theory that healing is primarily the function of meaning, and meaning transcends sickness and even death itself. He concludes that what people ultimately seek in life is the healing of their souls. 

Sorajjakool brings many Eastern and Western resources to his conversation on health, meaning, and healing. He incorporates the perspectives of theologians and philosophers like Paul Tillich, Carl Jung, Søren Kierkegaard, Raimundo Panikkar, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Macquarrie; as well as references to religious texts, including yin and yang, and alchemy.

A clear, distinct understanding of spirituality in clinical contexts is presented, with an argument for the role of meaning in the healing process, based on evidence that there may be healing even in the face of death. Sorajjakool identifies the transitional processes people may go through as they seek to make sense of their experiences during a health crisis. He suggests an alternative approach to spiritual assessment and provides methods of spiritual care that speak to the soul.

 

 

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