Current Issues and Emerging Trends in Medical Tourism


Book Description

The era of globalization allows for more connectivity between nations and cultures. This increase in international association gives citizens more availability to take advantage of opportunities in other nations, such as medical assistance and accompanying services. Current Issues and Emerging Trends in Medical Tourism focuses on the emerging phenomena of international travel by patients in search of improved healthcare services and treatment, wellness programs, and complementary recreational activities. Including extensive coverage and case studies focusing on patient mobility and new opportunities for health services across borders, this authoritative reference source is essential to the needs of healthcare providers, nonprofit organizations, students, and medical professionals seeking relevant research on the relationship between global travel and access to healthcare. This publication features innovative, research-based chapters spanning the spectrum of medical travel issues including, but not limited to, customer perceptions, ethical considerations, reproductive medicine, social media use, family caregivers, organ transplants, human trafficking, and surrogacy concerns.




Health Professions Education


Book Description

The Institute of Medicine study Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001) recommended that an interdisciplinary summit be held to further reform of health professions education in order to enhance quality and patient safety. Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality is the follow up to that summit, held in June 2002, where 150 participants across disciplines and occupations developed ideas about how to integrate a core set of competencies into health professions education. These core competencies include patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and informatics. This book recommends a mix of approaches to health education improvement, including those related to oversight processes, the training environment, research, public reporting, and leadership. Educators, administrators, and health professionals can use this book to help achieve an approach to education that better prepares clinicians to meet both the needs of patients and the requirements of a changing health care system.




Emerging Trends in Medical Plastic Engineering and Manufacturing


Book Description

Emerging Trends in Medical Plastic Engineering and Manufacturing gives engineers and materials scientists working in the field detailed insights into upcoming technologies in medical polymers. While plastic manufacturing combines the possibility of mass production and wide design variability, there are still opportunities within the plastic engineering field which have not been fully adopted in the medical industry. In addition, there are numerous additional challenges related to the development of products for this industry, such as ensuring tolerance to disinfection, biocompatibility, selecting compliant additives for processing, and more. This book enables product designers, polymer processing engineers, and manufacturing engineers to take advantage of the numerous upcoming developments in medical plastics, such as autoregulated volume-correction to achieve zero defect production or the development of 'intelligent' single use plastic products, and methods for sterile manufacturing which reduce the need for subsequent sterilization processes. Finally, as medical devices get smaller, the book discusses the challenges posed by miniaturization for injection molders, how to respond to these challenges, and the rapidly advancing prototyping technologies. - Provides a roadmap to the emerging technologies for polymers in the medical device industry, including coverage of 'intelligent' single use products, personalized medical devices, and the integration of manufacturing steps to improve workflows - Helps engineers in the biomedical and medical devices industries to navigate and anticipate the special requirements of this field with relation to biocompatibility, sterilization methods, and government regulations - Presents tactics readers can use to take advantage of rapid prototyping technologies, such as 3D printing, to reduce defects in production and develop products that enable entirely new treatment possibilities




Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care


Book Description

Drawing on the work of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the 2007 IOM Annual Meeting assessed some of the rapidly occurring changes in health care related to new diagnostic and treatment tools, emerging genetic insights, the developments in information technology, and healthcare costs, and discussed the need for a stronger focus on evidence to ensure that the promise of scientific discovery and technological innovation is efficiently captured to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time. As new discoveries continue to expand the universe of medical interventions, treatments, and methods of care, the need for a more systematic approach to evidence development and application becomes increasingly critical. Without better information about the effectiveness of different treatment options, the resulting uncertainty can lead to the delivery of services that may be unnecessary, unproven, or even harmful. Improving the evidence-base for medicine holds great potential to increase the quality and efficiency of medical care. The Annual Meeting, held on October 8, 2007, brought together many of the nation's leading authorities on various aspects of the issues - both challenges and opportunities - to present their perspectives and engage in discussion with the IOM membership.




Global Health


Book Description

The health of human populations around the world is constantly changing and the health profiles of most nations in the early twenty-first century global health landscape are unrecognizable compared with those of just a century ago. This book examines and explains these health changes and considers likely future patterns and changes. While the overall picture charted is one of progress and improvement, certain unfortunate regressions and stubbornly persistent health inequalities are equally shown to be part of the evolving patterns of global health. The chapters of the book are organized in three major parts: The first part introduces readers to the principal concepts of global health, and to the idea of populations having distinctive health profiles. In particular, it explores how those profiles can be measured, and how they change, using the umbrella concepts and theories of epidemiological and health transition. Building on the first section, the second part focuses on the evolution of health states, as well as paying particular attention to the reasons for the many subnational inequalities in global health. It also examines health challenges such as the continuing infectious disease burden and current emerging 'epidemics'. The final part transports readers from the current health scene to future possible and probable health scenarios, acknowledging the challenges presented by global environmental change, as well as issues centred around geopolitics and human security. Using clear and original explanations of complex issues, this text makes extensive use of boxed case studies and international examples, with thought-provoking discussion questions posed for readers at the end of each chapter. Global Health is essential reading for students of global health, public health and development studies.




The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment


Book Description

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.




The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century


Book Description

The anthrax incidents following the 9/11 terrorist attacks put the spotlight on the nation's public health agencies, placing it under an unprecedented scrutiny that added new dimensions to the complex issues considered in this report. The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century reaffirms the vision of Healthy People 2010, and outlines a systems approach to assuring the nation's health in practice, research, and policy. This approach focuses on joining the unique resources and perspectives of diverse sectors and entities and challenges these groups to work in a concerted, strategic way to promote and protect the public's health. Focusing on diverse partnerships as the framework for public health, the book discusses: The need for a shift from an individual to a population-based approach in practice, research, policy, and community engagement. The status of the governmental public health infrastructure and what needs to be improved, including its interface with the health care delivery system. The roles nongovernment actors, such as academia, business, local communities and the media can play in creating a healthy nation. Providing an accessible analysis, this book will be important to public health policy-makers and practitioners, business and community leaders, health advocates, educators and journalists.




Emerging Health Trends


Book Description

3 books illuminate the cutting edge medical research that could save your life Right now, science is transforming what we know about preserving and improving human health. These three extraordinary books take you to the cutting edge of emerging science, presenting new findings that might someday save your life. In Antibiotic Resistance: Understanding and Responding to an Emerging Crisis, Karl S. Drlica and David S. Perlin presents a thorough and authoritative overview of the growing resistance of pathogenic bacteria to antibiotics, and what this means to our ability to control and treat infectious diseases. The authors answer crucial questions such as: What is resistance? How does it emerge? How do common human activities promote resistance? What can we do about it? How can we strengthen our defenses against resistance, minimize our risks, extend the effectiveness of current antibiotics, and find new ones faster? Next, in Chips, Clones, and Living Beyond 100: How Far Will the Biosciences Take Us?, Paul and Joyce A. Schoemaker tour the remarkable field of biosciences as it stands today, and preview the directions and innovations that are most likely to emerge in the coming years. They offer a clear, non-technical overview of crucial current developments that are likely to have enormous impact, addressing issues ranging from increased human longevity to global warming, bio-warfare to personalized medicine. Along the way, they illuminate each of the exciting technologies and hot-button issues associated with contemporary biotechnology - including stem cells, cloning, probiotics, DNA microarrays, proteomics, gene therapy, and more. Finally, in It Takes a Genome, Greg Gibson posits a revolutionary new hypothesis: our genome is out of equilibrium, both with itself and its environment. Our bodies weren’t designed to subsist on fat and sugary foods; our immune systems aren’t designed for today’s clean, bland environments; our minds aren’t designed to process hard-edged, artificial electronic inputs from dawn ‘til midnight. That, says Gibson, is why so many of us suffer from chronic diseases that barely touched our ancestors. Gibson reveals the stunningly complex ways genes cooperate and interact; illuminates the genetic “mismatches” that lead to cancer, diabetes, inflammatory and infectious diseases, AIDS, depression, and senility; and considers surprising new evidence for genetic variations in human psychology. From world-renowned leaders and experts, including Karl S. Drlica, David S. Perlin, Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Joyce A. Schoemaker, and Greg Gibson




Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare


Book Description

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare is more than a comprehensive introduction to artificial intelligence as a tool in the generation and analysis of healthcare data. The book is split into two sections where the first section describes the current healthcare challenges and the rise of AI in this arena. The ten following chapters are written by specialists in each area, covering the whole healthcare ecosystem. First, the AI applications in drug design and drug development are presented followed by its applications in the field of cancer diagnostics, treatment and medical imaging. Subsequently, the application of AI in medical devices and surgery are covered as well as remote patient monitoring. Finally, the book dives into the topics of security, privacy, information sharing, health insurances and legal aspects of AI in healthcare. - Highlights different data techniques in healthcare data analysis, including machine learning and data mining - Illustrates different applications and challenges across the design, implementation and management of intelligent systems and healthcare data networks - Includes applications and case studies across all areas of AI in healthcare data




Social Work Practice in Healthcare


Book Description

Social Work Practice in Health Care by Karen M. Allen and William J. Spitzer is a pragmatic and comprehensive book that helps readers develop the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for effective health care social work practice, as well as an understanding of the technological, social, political, ethical, and financial factors affecting contemporary patient care. Packed with case studies and exercises, the book emphasizes the importance of being attentive to both patient and organizational needs, covers emerging trends in health care policy and delivery, provides extensive discussion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and addresses social work practice across the continuum of care.