Download or read book Toward Precision Medicine written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Motivated by the explosion of molecular data on humans-particularly data associated with individual patients-and the sense that there are large, as-yet-untapped opportunities to use this data to improve health outcomes, Toward Precision Medicine explores the feasibility and need for "a new taxonomy of human disease based on molecular biology" and develops a potential framework for creating one. The book says that a new data network that integrates emerging research on the molecular makeup of diseases with clinical data on individual patients could drive the development of a more accurate classification of diseases and ultimately enhance diagnosis and treatment. The "new taxonomy" that emerges would define diseases by their underlying molecular causes and other factors in addition to their traditional physical signs and symptoms. The book adds that the new data network could also improve biomedical research by enabling scientists to access patients' information during treatment while still protecting their rights. This would allow the marriage of molecular research and clinical data at the point of care, as opposed to research information continuing to reside primarily in academia. Toward Precision Medicine notes that moving toward individualized medicine requires that researchers and health care providers have access to very large sets of health- and disease-related data linked to individual patients. These data are also critical for developing the information commons, the knowledge network of disease, and ultimately the new taxonomy.

Download or read book The Future of Public Health written by Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1988-01-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

Download or read book The Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses Batten Disease written by Sara Mole and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-10 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses are an extremely rare group of inherited neurodegenerative diseases that primarily affect children. Core symptoms of these conditions typically include epilepsy, cognitive decline and visual failure. These diseases are so rare that professionals who come into contact with them need a consultative reference work that enables them to become expert, or identify who to contact for more details. Fully updated and revised, this second edition continues to be the definitive volume on this devastating group of disorders. Written by an international collection of authorities in the field, it provides invaluable advice on their diagnosis, patient care, and new treatments that are available. This new edition of the definitive reference text on the neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses will prove useful for clinicians, family physicians, research scientists, diagnostic laboratories, families affected by the disease as well as by workers in industry planning translational research.

Download or read book Unequal Treatment written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-02-06 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

Download or read book The Social Transformation of American Medicine written by Paul Starr and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries. "The definitive social history of the medical profession in America....A monumental achievement."—H. Jack Geiger, M.D., New York Times Book Review

Download or read book Finding What Works in Health Care written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.

Download or read book Pathology and Genetics of Tumours of the Nervous System written by Paul Kleihues and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of this concise reference book was prepared by 106 authors from 21 countries and covers the neuro-oncological literature until January 2000. Diagnostic criteria, pathological features and associated genetic alterations are described in a strictly disease-oriented manner. Sections on more than 70 neoplasms and their variants include ICD-O codes, incidence, age and sex distribution, location, clinical signs and symptoms, pathology, genetics and predictive factors. New disease entities include the chordoid glioma of the third ventricle and the cerebellar liponeurocytoma. Inherited tumor syndromes involving the nervous system are dealt with in a separate chapter, combining diagnostic criteria, pathology and genetics.

Download or read book To Err Is Human written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences written by Jacob Cohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Statistical Power Analysis is a nontechnical guide to power analysis in research planning that provides users of applied statistics with the tools they need for more effective analysis. The Second Edition includes: * a chapter covering power analysis in set correlation and multivariate methods; * a chapter considering effect size, psychometric reliability, and the efficacy of "qualifying" dependent variables and; * expanded power and sample size tables for multiple regression/correlation.

Download or read book The Future of the Public s Health in the 21st Century written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-02-01 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The New England Journal of Medicine written by and published by . This book was released on 1867 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1993-02-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.

Download or read book Medicine Rationality and Experience written by Byron J. Good and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biomedicine is often thought to provide a scientific account of the human body and of illness. In this view, non-Western and folk medical systems are regarded as systems of 'belief' and subtly discounted. This is an impoverished perspective for understanding illness and healing across cultures, one that neglects many facets of Western medical practice and obscures its kinship with healing in other traditions. Drawing on his research in several American and Middle Eastern medical settings, in this 1993 book Professor Good develops a critical, anthropological account of medical knowledge and practice. He shows how physicians and healers enter and inhabit distinctive worlds of meaning and experience. He explores how stories or illness narratives are joined with bodily experience in shaping and responding to human suffering and argues that moral and aesthetic considerations are present in routine medical practice as in other forms of healing.

Download or read book Ethics and Regulation of Clinical Research written by Robert J. Levine and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of human subjects in medical and scientific research has given rise to troubling ethical questions. How should human subjects be selected for experiments? What should they be told about the research in which they are involved? How can their privacy be protected? When is it permissible to deceive them? How do we deal with subjects such as children, fetuses, and the mentally infirm, for whom informed consent is impossible? In this book, Dr. Robert J. Levine reviews federal regulations, ethical analysis, and case studies in an attempt to answer these questions. His book is an essential reference for everyone--members of institutional review boards, scientists, philosophers, lawyers--addressing the ethical issues involved. "[Levine's] experience as a clinician, IRB chairman, writer and editor of a journal devoted exclusively to issues faced by IRBS makes him uniquely qualified to bring together the legal, ethical, and practical dimensions. . . [The book] is sophisticated but readable. . . [and] should be on every IRB administrator's desk and in every medical ethics library."--Norman Fost, M.D., The New England Journal of Medicine "Levine. . . is one of the foremost historians of contemporary clinical science. . . . His book is at once a guide to primary sources for the history of clinical research in the late twentieth century and a pioneering secondary source about that history."--Daniel M. Fox, Bulletin of the History of Medicine "You will be charmed by the [book's] elegance and lucidity and. . . persuaded of its relevance to doctors in any country."--Alex Paton, British Medical Journal "Should be of wide interest to those keen to see advances in medical research brought into general medical practice."--Gilbert Omenn, Issues in Science and Technology

Download or read book The Biology of Cholesterol and Related Steroids written by N. B. Myant and published by Butterworth-Heinemann. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 925 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Biology of Cholesterol and Related Steroids focuses on the study of sterols in relation to living organisms. The publication first takes a look at the analysis of sterols and related steroids and the distribution of sterols and related steroids in nature, as well as the processes of extraction and separation and presence of sterols in plants, fungi, vertebrates, and invertebrates. The text then ponders on biosynthesis of sterols and metabolism of cholesterol. Topics include formation of fatty acid esters of cholesterol, steroid hormones, biosynthetic pathway to sterols, reaction mechanisms, and comparative aspects of sterol synthesis. The manuscript examines the developmental aspects of cholesterol metabolism and sterols in biological membranes. The book also reviews cholesterol synthesis in animal tissues, sterol metabolism in isolated cells, and epidemiology of the plasma cholesterol. Discussions focus on selection of statistical populations, genetic influences, regulation of sterol synthesis, general aspects of sterol metabolism, and removal of cell cholesterol in vivo. The publication is a dependable source of data for biochemists and readers interested in the biology of cholesterol and steroids.

Download or read book On the Take written by Jerome P. Kassirer M.D. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all know that doctors accept gifts from drug companies, ranging from pens and coffee mugs to free vacations at luxurious resorts. But as the former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine reveals in this shocking expose, these innocuous-seeming gifts are just the tip of an iceberg that is distorting the practice of medicine and jeopardizing the health of millions of Americans today. In On the Take, Dr. Jerome Kassirer offers an unsettling look at the pervasive payoffs that physicians take from big drug companies and other medical suppliers, arguing that the billion-dollar onslaught of industry money has deflected many physicians' moral compasses and directly impacted the everyday care we receive from the doctors and institutions we trust most. Underscored by countless chilling untold stories, the book illuminates the financial connections between the wealthy companies that make drugs and the doctors who prescribe them. Kassirer details the shocking extent of these financial enticements and explains how they encourage bias, promote dangerously misleading medical information, raise the cost of medical care, and breed distrust. Among the questionable practices he describes are: the disturbing number of senior academic physicians who have financial arrangements with drug companies; the unregulated "front" organizations that advocate certain drugs; the creation of biased medical education materials by the drug companies themselves; and the use of financially conflicted physicians to write clinical practice guidelines or to testify before the FDA in support of a particular drug. A brilliant diagnosis of an epidemic of greed, On the Take offers insight into how we can cure the medical profession and restore our trust in doctors and hospitals.

Download or read book Orofacial Pain and Headache written by Yair Sharav and published by Elsevier Health Sciences. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OROFACIAL PAIN AND HEADACHE is a timely, comprehensive and instructive addition to the pain literature; in particular the important and truly multidisciplinary area of orofacial pain. Based on their extensive clinical experience and a thorough understanding of pain mechanisms specific to the trigeminal system, the editors, Yair Sharav and Rafael Benoliel, have integrated knowledge from the areas of headache and orofacial pain and have succinctly explained common mechanisms involved in the two phenomena, with important implications for pain diagnosis and management. Internationally renowned editors and contributor teamIntegrated approach to the diagnosis and treatment of oral and facial pain syndromes as well as common primary headaches A thorough review of the four majorclinical entities of orofacial pain: acute dental, neurovascular, musculoskeletal and neuropathicComprehensive coverage of the pharmacotherapy of acute and chronic painChapters on the psychological, neurosurgical and otolaryngological aspects of orofacial painAn in depth discussion of facial pain and headaches secondary to medical co-morbiditiesExploration of complementary and alternative methods of pain control including acupuncture, food additives and hypnosis