Medical simulation technology

Advances in Patient Safety New Directions and Alternative Approaches is a four-volume set of 115 articles, which describe patient safety findings, investigative approaches, process analyses, lessons learned, and practical tools to prevent patients from being harmed. It includes articles by AHRQ-funded patient safety researchers on topics such as reporting systems, risk assessment, safety culture, medical simulation, health information technology, and medication safety (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0034). 

Some of the factors motivating the usage of simulation technologies are very well known. Ethical considerations and the risk of failure preclude the design and evaluation of therapeutics and devices in live humans, so that devices and treatments are often tested on computer and animal models first. In the past, animals have been the preferred choice, but this approach is continually being reevaluated. Whereas most researchers readily agree that animal experimentation has been and will continue to be necessary for the advancement of medical science, most would welcome methods and procedures that might reduce or even eliminate the use of animals. Furthermore, animals are rarely perfect models of human diseases and conditions. Thus, there has been and will continue to be a demand for alternative models and procedures. Desktop patients, if used to complement animal studies, can actually increase... 

The Non-Medical Science and Technology part of the Joint CBD Program is organized in five commodity areas contamination avoidance, individual protection, collective protection, decontamination, and modeling and simulation.1 The wide range of activities in each of these commodity areas is indicated in Figure 4.1 the commodity areas are further described later in this chapter and in Appendix C. 

Marroquin, E. Jr. 1991. Control of Respiration Under Simulated Airway Compression. Thesis. Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston. 

Cao L, Mantell S, Polla D (2001) Design and simulation of an implantable medical drug delivery system using microelectromechanical systems technology. Sens Actuators a-Phys 94 117-125... 

Another area which has attracted significant interest over the last few years is polyelectrolytes at surfaces and interfaces [8,181-184], The progress in this area has implications for different areas of science and technology such as colloids, biophysics, biochemistry, medical science, pharmacy, food processing, water purification, etc. Some simulation work [185-191] has already appeared, suggesting a broad spectrum of interesting physical phenomena. 

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