Medicine Meets Engineering

Biomedical Engineering is defined as the science that integrates medical and engineering sciences to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients. Only by this integration progress can be achieved. Both medical and engineering sciences comprise a huge diversity in topics, so it is imaginable that Biomedical Engineering, combining these two science areas, is even more huge. Thanks to this megadisciplinary approach many breakthroughs can be achieved. More and more research groups realize this and start new research projects, which results in a rapid increase in knowledge in Biomedical Engineering. This will only benefit the main goal of Biomedical Engineering; improving diagnosis and treatment of patients when it is spread and applied. The 2nd Regensburg Applied Biomechanics conference is special in that it realized both the distribution of new knowledge and the essential integration of medical and engineering specialists. The conference dealt with the latest results in applied biomechanics, ranging from fundamental bone strength properties via bone remodeling phenomena to new implants that replace lost human functions. Also new research areas like robot surgery and tissue engineering were discussed.

Biomedical Engineering is defined as the science that integrates medical and engineering sciences to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients. Only by this integration progress can be achieved. Both medical and engineering sciences comprise a huge diversity in topics, so it is imaginable that Biomedical Engineering, combining these two science areas, is even more huge. Thanks to this megadisciplinary approach many breakthroughs can be achieved. More and more research groups realize this and start new research projects, which results in a rapid increase in knowledge in Biomedical Engineering. This will only benefit the main goal of Biomedical Engineering; improving diagnosis and treatment of patients when it is spread and applied.

Biomedical Engineering is defined as the science that integrates medical and engineering sciences to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients. The 2nd Regensburg Applied Biomechanics conference dealt with results in applied biomechanics, and discusses research areas like robot surgery and tissue engineering.

The second edition of this introductory textbook conveys the impact of biomedical engineering through examples, applications, and a problem-solving approach.

Since 1992, when it began as the "Medicine Meets Virtual Reality" conference, NextMed/MMVR has been a forum for researchers utilizing IT advances to improve diagnosis and therapy, medical education, and procedural training. Scientists and engineers, physicians and other care providers, educators and students, military medicine specialists, futurists, and industry: all come together with the shared goal of making healthcare more precise and effective. This book presents the proceedings of the 20th NextMed/MMVR conference, held in San Diego, California, USA, in February 2013. It covers a wide range of topics: simulation, modeling, imaging, data visualization, haptics, robotics, sensors, interfaces, plasma medicine, and more. Key applications include simulator design, information-guided therapies, learning tools, mental and physical rehabilitation, and intelligence networking. During the past two decades, healthcare has been transformed by progress in computer-enabled technology, and NextMed/MMVR has played a prominent role in this transformation.

"Meet scientists who are on the verge of breakthroughs in biomedical engineering. From encouraging the body to regenerate damaged bone and muscle tissue to re-routing visual stimuli to the brain to help blind people see, these discoveries will change medicine radically."--

Current demographic, economic and social conditions which developed countries are faced with require a paradigm change for delivering high quality and efficient health services. In that context, healthcare systems have to turn from organization-centered to process-oriented and finally towards individualized patient care, also called personal care, based on ehealth platform services. Interoperability requirements for ubiquitous personalized health services reach beyond current concepts of health information integration among professional stakeholders and related Electronic Patient Records. Future personal health platforms particularly have to maintain semantic interoperability among systems using different modalities and technologies, different knowledge representation and domain experts' languages as well as different coding schemes and terminologies to include home care, as well as personal and mobile systems. This development is not restricted to regions or countries, but appears globally, requiring a comprehensive international collaboration. This publication within the series Studies in Health Technology and Informatics presents papers from leading international experts representing all domains involved in ehealth.