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The Engines of Hippocrates: From the Dawn of Medicine to Medical and Pharmaceutical Informatics
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More About This Title The Engines of Hippocrates: From the Dawn of Medicine to Medical and Pharmaceutical Informatics

  • English

English

A unique, integrative look at information-based medicine

The convergence of medical science, biology, pharmacology, biomedical engineering, healthcare, and information technology is revolutionizing medical and scientific practice, and has broader social implications still being understood. The Engines of Hippocrates provides a unique, integrative, and holistic look at the new paradigm of information-based medicine, covering a broad range of topics for a wide readership.

The authors take a comprehensive approach, examining the prehistory, history, and future of medicine and medical technology and its relation to information; how history led to such present-day discoveries as the structure of DNA, the human genome, and the discipline of bioinformatics; and what the future results of these discoveries may hold. Their far-ranging views are their own and not necessarily those of the IBM Corporation or other employers.

The Engines of Hippocrates helps readers understand:

  • Forces shaping the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries today, including personalized medicine, genomics, data mining, and bionanotechnology

  • The relationship between pharmaceutical science today and other disciplines such as philosophy of health, history, economics, mathematics, and computer science

  • The integrated role alternative and non-Western medicines could play in a new, information-based medicine

  • Practical, ethical, organizational, technological, and social problems of information-based medicine, along with a novel data-centric computing model and a self-adaptive software engineering model, and corresponding information technology architectures, including perspectives on sharing remote data efficiently and securely for the common good

An unmatched, cross-disciplinary perspective on the big picture of today and tomorrow's medicine, The Engines of Hippocrates provides a reference to interested readers both inside and outside the pharmaceutical and medical communities, as well as a peerless classroom supplement to students in a wide variety of disciplines.

  • English

English

BARRY ROBSON is Director of Medical Research and Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Evidence Based Medicine at St. Matthew's University School of Medicine, and CEO of The Dirac Foundation, formed with the permission of Nobel laureate Paul A. M. Dirac's widow to promote understanding of the value of theoretical physics in human and veterinary medicine. Until recently, he was Chief Scientific Officer of IBM Global Healthcare and Life Sciences, and then Global Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences, an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and previously, Strategic Advisor at IBM Research headquarters.

O. K. BAEK is a Senior Solutions Architect at IBM, specializing in healthcare and with a passionate interest in the benefits and long-standing logic of Oriental medicine. He is particularly interested in the development of novel architectures for sharing and using medical information securely, and in translational research, the matter of rapidly delivering the results of medical research and genomics to enhance everyday clinical decisions.

  • English

English

Preface.

About the Authors.

1 A Short Preview of Mankind, Medicine, Molecules, and Machines.

2 From Prehistory to Hippocrates.

3 The Road to the New Medicine.

4 The Imminent Challenge: Medicine as an Industry.

5 The Next Decade: Personalized Medicine and the Digital Patient Record.

6 Enforcing your Rights: Medical Ethics, Consent, Privacy, and IT.

7 Holistic Medicine and IT.

8 Architecting It All.

9 Guardian Angels: Knowing Our Molecules, Drug and Vaccine Design, Medical Decision Support, Medical Vigilance and Defense.

10 What Next? At One with the Engines of Hippocrates.

Glossary.

Clinical Trial Terms.

Notes, Bibliography, and Further Reading Guide.

Index. 

  • English

English

"We should not throw a stone to the authors for not having limited the subject of this book to the necessity of digital records running on computers for patients rightly waiting for a personalized healthcare. Rather, the reader will also enjoy the large spectrum of knowledge delivered through innumerable digressions hopefully made re-accessible through a generous index. Written with a witty journalistic style, this book lets itself read like a novel rich in unexpected developments."
—Jean Garnier, Editor-in-Chief, Biophysical Review

"In this book, Robson and Baek, both experts of the interface between medicine and computer, led the reader to a journey encompassing many disciplines. Though daunting at first, one cannot help appreciate the perspective from history, health, philosophy, economy, mathematics and IT. As history has shown, IT, along with many other drug discovery technologies, contributed to the golden age of the drug industry signified with the era of blockbuster drugs. In today's environment with the paucity of blockbuster drugs, one cannot help to wonder if drug discovery technologies including IT should be attenuated or extenuated.
This book could not be out at a more opportune time. Americans are now burdened with the crushing weight of healthcare cost. One of the cost-saving measures, recognized by both President Obama and the Congress, is digitization of medical records. In addition, this book also covers topics such as patent-based drug design, pharmacogenomics, medical vigilance, and many other gems. It is a tribute to the authors' remarkable breadth of knowledge and organizational skills to assemble them together. Anyone interested in health care, especially the ones interested in pharmaceutical informatics, would benefit from reading this book."
—Jie Jack Li

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