XII Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing 2010

Book excerpt: Over the past three decades, the exploding number of new technologies and applications introduced in medical practice, often powered by advances in biosignal processing and biomedical imaging, created an amazing account of new possibilities for diagnosis and therapy, but also raised major questions of appropriateness and safety. The accelerated development in this field, alongside with the promotion of electronic health care solutions, is often on the basis of an uncontrolled diffusion and use of medical technology. The emergence and use of medical devices is multiplied rapidly and today there exist more than one million different products available on the world market. Despite the fact that the rising cost of health care, partly resulting from the new emerging technological applications, forms the most serious and urgent problem for many governments today, another important concern is that of patient safety and user protection, issues that should never be compromised and expelled from the Biomedical Engineering research practice agenda.