Application of nanoparticles in ocular drug delivery systems Abstract Application of a drug in the form of eye drops represents easiest, safest and, at the moment, the most common non-invasive method of ocular drug application. Other conventional ophthalmic formulations in the form of aqueous and oily solutions, ointments, suspensions and emulsions were established to increase bioavailability, solubility and pericorneal retention time of a drug, compared to eye drops. But in the last few decades, nanotechnology-based ophthalmic formulations have been intensively analysed in the area of drug delivery to anterior and posterior parts of the eye. Systems based on nanotechnology with adequate nanoparticle size can be formed to achieve lower irritation and inflammation and better bioavailability and interaction of a drug with ocular tissue. The nanocarrier-based approach led to the development of nanoparticles, nanosuspensions, nanoemulsions, liposomes, nanomicelles, niosomes, nanocrystals and dendrimers for ocular drug delivery. These systems have significant advancements compared to conventional systems, particularly if they are observed as systems for drug delivery to the posterior eye part. Besides advantages, the nanoparticle use in these circumstances could be a reason for concern, because of certain toxic effects noticed in some studies. In this article, we aim to provide an overview of the potential of incorporating an active pharmaceutical ingredient into nanoparticles investigated in the therapy of anterior and posterior eye segment conditions. We will discuss the most important improvements that have been accomplished in the development of nanoparticle-based formulations for the treatment of glaucoma, autoimmune uveitis, age-associated macular degeneration and corneal and choroidal neovascularization.

Assistant computer program for adequate disposal of medical devices Abstract In developing countries, up to 80% of medical equipment comes from donation. The World Health Organization (WHO) has made recommendations on desirable factors that should be taken into consideration when donating medical technology. We included these recommendations while building the Assistant Program for Adequate Disposal of Medical Devices (APAD) using the application generator App Building by MATLAB. We evaluated thirty units of medical equipment from different areas of a secondary health care level hospital. The Instrumentation Technician (IT) (expert) previously defined if the medical units were suitable to be donated, could be repaired, could be used as reservoir, or should be completely removed. APAD also made a proposal of the possible use of this technology. In 23 out of 30 medical units, the decision made by the APAD matched with that of the expert: seven for donation, eight to be repaired, two to serve as reservoir and six for disposal. Our results suggest that APAD could serve as a support tool for the IT and for the Biomedical Engineering Department in a hospital, to determine the possible use of medical equipment that has been discarded.

An index to prioritize the preventive maintenance of medical equipment Abstract We propose an index to prioritize preventive maintenance for medical equipment. Our index considers seven variables: type of equipment, equipment function, maintenance requirements, calibration, equipment age, equipment location, and equipment hazards. We developed a mathematical model using these variables, and its result is interpreted as an index of equipment maintenance priority. The numerical output of the index was classified into three categories: high, medium, and low priority. We proposed our index model to technical staff at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases in Mexico as a protocol for scheduling appropriate preventive maintenance for medical equipment during the year. The index was tested in a sample of 16 different medical equipment. Our model provides a guide to define the priority and the number of preventive maintenance routines required for medical equipment per year.

Development and implementation of algorithms with diffusion tensor images to evaluate brain connectivity Abstract Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DWI) is the use of specific MRI sequences, which uses the diffusion of Hydrogen atoms to generate contrast and it allows the mapping of the diffusion process of molecules in vivo and reflects interactions with macromolecules, fibers, and membranes among other. Hydrogen atom diffusion patterns (quantification of anisotropy) can reveal microscopic details about tissue architecture, either normal or in a diseased state. A special kind of DWI, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), has been used extensively to map white matter tractography in the brain. Tractography is a procedure that is used to highlight neural tracts (axon), its fibers position estimation in brain areas has broad potential implications in cognitive neuroscience fields. An algorithm based on diffusion tensor Image is developed and implemented in order to evaluate brain connectivity in different regions of interest. The major objective of this work is represent two-dimensional and three-dimensional connectivity between areas thereby show the potential of the DTI. Results shows how Connectivity Matrix provides statistical data on the pattern of anatomical relationships, this connectivity pattern is formed by synapses that represent the cross correlations and the flow of information.

Nanocomposites: a brief review Abstract Nanocomposite material consists out of several phases where at least one, two or three dimensions are in nanometer range. Taking material dimensions down to nanometer level creates phase interfaces which are very important for enhancement of materials properties. The ratio between surface area and volume of reinforced material used during nanocomposites preparation is directly involved in understanding of structure-property relationship. Nanocomposties offer opportunities on completely new scales for solving obstacles ranging from medical, pharmaceutical industry, food packaging, to electronics and energy industry. This paper presents main ideas behind nanocomposites and discusses matrix materials upon which nanocomposites can be divided in three classes; metal matrix, ceramic matrix and polymer matrix nanocomposites. The goal is to explain which raw material and technique is most suited for processing of a particular nanocomposites as well as application, advantages and drawbacks of nanocomposites. Nanotechnology is still in development and current limitations hinder global transition from macro-scale to nano-scale.

MapReduce based integration of health hubs: a healthcare design approach Abstract The increasing population in Asia brings up the need for integration of healthcare for efficient and timely manageable treatment for different diseases. Healthcare domain is one of the most important and challenging fields in terms of data collection and analysis. This domain always provide lots of opportunities to explore the hidden knowledge in accessing health records. With the growth of unstructured data in large volume that leads towards the solution by the NoSQL data management tool to manage the huge amount of data. This framework proposes a MapReduce Approach (MRA) for data management in healthcare industry with join based expectation maximization algorithm for NoSQL data management solution, which scales the data with accurate modality. This approach also simplifies the way to integrate healthcare data from different models in the distributed environment from different health hubs. Experimental results show that the proposed approach works in a scalable manner to integrate and match the unstructured data of different health data sources. Examples are illustrated with suitable methodology and further research scope is pinpointed.

Medical emergency triage and patient prioritisation in a telemedicine environment: a systematic review Abstract Medical institutions face serious problems, such as growing elderly population and lack of doctors. Telemedicine and remote health monitoring system (RHMS) intend to tackle these problems by slightly shortening hospital stays. RHMS reduces the burden on patients with primary care and improves communication among different health units to reduce the burden on emergency departments. Several healthcare studies have attempted to replace hospital visits with RHMS to deliver triage and prioritisation for patients because of considerable advances in wireless information communication and signal-processing technology. The process of medical triage determines the severity of a patient’s situation, whilst prioritisation is carried out to provide healthcare services for patients in due course to save their lives. An essential investigation is required to highlight the drawbacks of the current situation of patient triage and prioritisation over telemedicine environment. In this paper, a systematic review of medical emergency triage and patient prioritisation in a telemedicine environment was presented on the basis of two critical directions. Firstly, previous studies on patient triage and prioritisation in such an environment were collected, analysed and categorised. Secondly, many standards and guidelines of triage and different methods and techniques of prioritisation were presented and reviewed in detail. The following results were obtained: (1) The limitations and problems of existing patient triage and prioritisation methods were presented and emphasised. (2) The combination of triage and prioritisation of patients with chronic heart disease was not presented. (3) A framework based on evidence theory and integration of multilayer analytical hierarchy process and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution methods can be used in the future in order to triage chronic heart disease patients into different emergency levels and prioritise many patients to receive emergency and treatment-based services.

Medical bed with integrated toilet: design considerations and utilization by a bedridden patient Abstract There have been many attempts to develop a better toileting aid for bedridden patients to replace conventional incontinence products such as absorbent products, indwelling urinary catheters, and bedpans, although without much success. Automatic urine and faeces disposal systems that detect, transport, and store urine and faeces temporarily for future disposal have been developed and commercialized in South Korea and Japan, but they have not been well-received by patients and carers owing to their inconvenience. For better excretion care, we developed a toilet integrated medical bed that is easy to use for both patients and carers. The toilet basin was incorporated onto the pelvis plate of the bed, and the fluid waste in the toilet basin was collected into a plastic bag through a curved waste storage tube attached to the toilet basin. The toilet-integrated medical electric bed was easy to use for an 84-year-old bedridden male patient. He was able to urinate and defaecate without the help of a carer. Independent urination and defaecation helped restore his dignity considerably. This medical bed with an embedded toilet could be a promising solution for excretion care of bedridden patients.

Technology Impact on Reading and writing skills of children with autism: a systematic literature review Abstract Due to the recent fast-paced advances in technology and its potential in ameliorating the writing and reading skills of children with autism, there is a need to update the study published by Knight, McKissick, and Saunders (J Autism Dev Disord 43(11):2628–48) to survey the latest research on the topic. Hence, the objective of this paper is to assess the methodology and limitations of published literature that investigate the use of technology to teach reading and writing skills to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. We conduct a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed studies on the impact of technology on reading and writing skills of children with autism for the years between 2013 and December 2017. We apply the criteria developed by Horner et al. (Except Child 71:165–178, 2005) and Gersten et al. (Except Child 71:149–164, 2005) to determine the quality of single-subject and group experimental research studies. We present seventeen studies that met the inclusion criteria. The studies examine 101 participants including 77 diagnosed with autism with the mean age of 8.7 years. None of the seven-reviewed single-subject studies meet the criteria for high or acceptable quality. The group-subject study does not meet the quality criteria. We conclude that the level of the impact technology has on helping children with autism improve their reading and writing skills is hard to quantify due to the high variability in the results presented in the surveyed papers. Overall, all studies report positive outcomes despite the lack of software applications adapted for children with autism.

A new proposed feature selection method to predict kidney transplantation outcome Abstract Kidney transplantation graft survival prediction is important because of the difficulty of finding the organs. The exact prediction of kidney transplantation outcome is still not accurate even with the enhancements in acute rejection results. Machine learning methods introduce many ways to solve the kidney transplantation prediction problem than that of other methods. The power of any prediction method relies on the choosing of the proper variables. Feature selection is one of the important preprocessing procedures. It is the method that selects the minimal suitable variables that introduced in a set of features. This paper introduced a new proposed feature selection method that combines statistical methods with classification procedures of data mining technology to predict the probability of graft survival after kidney transplantation. Univariate analysis using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis method combined with Naïve Bayes classifier was used to specify the significant variables. Three data mining tools, namely naïve Bayes, decision tree and K-nearest neighbor classifiers were utilized to examine the instances of kidney transplantation, and their accuracy was compared with using the new proposed feature selection method and without using it. Experimental results have presented that the new proposed feature selection method have better results than other techniques.