Technology and Medical Practice


Book Description

The advanced technologies being used in diagnosis and care within modern medicine, whilst supporting and making medical practices possible, may also conflict with established traditions of medicine and care. What happens to the patient in a technologized medical environment? How are doctors', nurses' and medical scientists' practices changed when artefacts are involved? How is knowledge negotiated, or relations of power reconfigured? Technology and Medical Practice addresses these developments and dilemmas, focusing on various practices with technologies within hospitals and sociotechnical systems of care. Combining science and technology studies with medical sociology, the history of medicine and feminist approaches to science, this book presents analyses of artefacts-in-use across a variety of settings within the UK, USA and Europe, and will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of science and technology alike.




Medical Innovation


Book Description

This book brings together a collection of empirical case studies featuring a wide spectrum of medical innovation. While there is no unique pathway to successful medical innovation, recurring and distinctive features can be observed across different areas of clinical practice. This book examines why medical practice develops so unevenly across and within areas of disease, and how this relates to the underlying conditions of innovation across areas of practice. The contributions contained in this volume adopt a dynamic perspective on medical innovation based on the notion that scientific understanding, technology and clinical practice co-evolve along the co-ordinated search for solutions to medical problems. The chapters follow an historical approach to emphasise that the advancement of medical know-how is a contested, nuanced process, and that it involves a variety of knowledge bases whose evolutionary paths are rooted in the contexts in which they emerge. This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners concerned with medical innovation, management studies and the economics of innovation. Chapter 5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 3.0 license.




Medical Technology Assessment Directory


Book Description

For the first time, a single reference identifies medical technology assessment programs. A valuable guide to the field, this directory contains more than 60 profiles of programs that conduct and report on medical technology assessments. Each profile includes a listing of report citations for that program, and all the reports are indexed under major subject headings. Also included is a cross-listing of technology assessment report citations arranged by type of technology headings, brief descriptions of approximately 70 information sources of potential interest to technology assessors, and addresses and descriptions of 70 organizations with memberships, activities, publications, and other functions relevant to the medical technology assessment community.




Medical Technology Management Practice


Book Description

Such readers may include but are not limited to health administrators, technology planners, biomedical engineers and technologists, and supervisors and managers of technology-intensive departments."--BOOK JACKET.




Management of Medical Technology


Book Description

This is the second book in the series of books that we edit on the Management of Medical Technology (MMT) published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. The fIrst book Managing Technology in Health Care offered a broad-brushed view of the topics involved in the new and exciting area of MMT that we have launched. A group of distinguished scholars contributed to the fIrst book. While working on the first book in the series, and on a variety of articles in MMT, we began to realize that there is an urgent need for a comprehensive and highly focused book which will introduce and define the area of MMT. In addition, we had just completed the two studies of MMT in American hospitals, and had a magnificent database fully analyzed. With three months left in the first author's sabbatical, and thanks to the encouragement from our editor at Kluwer, Gary Folven, we took to the task of writing this book. The merging in this book of the description of a new intellectual space, and the write-up of the results from our MMT studies have created a unique blend of very attractive reading material. The reader will find this book to be a fascinating adventure into a newly-created area of intellectual endeavor, coupled with fIndings about how the health care delivery system manages teclUlology. Regardless of the reader's background, this book will certainly be of interest, as it links the medical and business frameworks.




Innovation in Medical Technology


Book Description

This thought-provoking study examines the ethical, legal, and social problems that arise with cutting-edge medical technology. Using as examples four powerful and largely unregulated technologies—off-label use of drugs, innovative surgery, assisted reproduction, and neuroimaging—Margaret L. Eaton and Donald Kennedy illustrate the difficult challenges faced by clinicians, researchers, and policy makers who seek to advance the frontiers of medicine safely and responsibly. Supported by medical history and case studies and drawing on reports from dozens of experts, the authors address important practical, ethical, and policy issues. They consider topics such as the responsible introduction of new medical products and services, the importance of patient consent, the extent of the duty to mitigate harm, and the responsibility to facilitate access to new medical therapies. This work's insights into the nature and consequences of medical innovation contribute to the national debate on how best to protect patients while fostering innovation and securing benefits.




Modern Methods of Clinical Investigation


Book Description

The very rapid pace of advances in biomedical research promises us a wide range of new drugs, medical devices, and clinical procedures. The extent to which these discoveries will benefit the public, however, depends in large part on the methods we choose for developing and testing them. Modern Methods of Clinical Investigation focuses on strategies for clinical evaluation and their role in uncovering the actual benefits and risks of medical innovation. Essays explore differences in our current systems for evaluating drugs, medical devices, and clinical procedures; health insurance databases as a tool for assessing treatment outcomes; the role of the medical profession, the Food and Drug Administration, and industry in stimulating the use of evaluative methods; and more. This book will be of special interest to policymakers, regulators, executives in the medical industry, clinical researchers, and physicians.




The Changing Economics of Medical Technology


Book Description

Americans praise medical technology for saving lives and improving health. Yet, new technology is often cited as a key factor in skyrocketing medical costs. This volume, second in the Medical Innovation at the Crossroads series, examines how economic incentives for innovation are changing and what that means for the future of health care. Up-to-date with a wide variety of examples and case studies, this book explores how payment, patent, and regulatory policiesâ€"as well as the involvement of numerous government agenciesâ€"affect the introduction and use of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and surgical procedures. The volume also includes detailed comparisons of policies and patterns of technological innovation in Western Europe and Japan. This fact-filled and practical book will be of interest to economists, policymakers, health administrators, health care practitioners, and the concerned public.




Biomedicine Examined


Book Description

The culture of contemporary medicine is the object of investigation in this book; the meanings and values implicit in biomedical knowledge and practice and the social processes through which they are produced are examined through the use of specific case studies. The essays provide examples of how various facets of 20th century medicine, including edu cation, research, the creation of medical knowledge, the development and application of technology, and day to day medical practice, are per vaded by a value system characteristic of an industrial-capitalistic view of the world in which the idea that science represents an objective and value free body of knowledge is dominant. The authors of the essays are sociologists and anthropologists (in almost equal numbers); also included are papers by a social historian and by three physicians all of whom have steeped themselves in the social sci ences and humanities. This co-operative endeavor, which has necessi tated the breaking down of disciplinary barriers to some extent, is per haps indicative of a larger movement in the social sciences, one in which there is a searching for a middle ground between grand theory and attempts at universal explanations on the one hand, and the context-spe cific empiricism and relativistic accounts characteristic of many historical and anthropological analyses on the other.




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.