Systems Engineering Approach to Medical Automation

Editors Felder (pathology, U. of Virginia), Alwan (director of the Center for Aging Services Technology) and Zhang (biomedical engineering, U. of Tennessee, Knoxville) present this guide to medical automation, underlining the need for additional engineering research in this emerging field. This volume explains how computer software and data warehouses are replacing traditional medical record storage methods at a rapid pace, and that modern technologies have become standard for scheduling health care staffing and services, maintaining lean and profitable operations and even solving difficult diagnostic issues. Professionals in all types of health care environments such as hospitals, pharmacies and billing offices can employ much of this information to reduce operating costs while increasing responsiveness to patient care. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Robin Felder is director of the Medical Automation Research Center and Professor of Pathology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Felder founded the Association for Laboratory Automation, and was founding Editor of the Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation, a peer reviewed journal that has been published for over six years. He is also the coeditor of Life Science Automation Fundamentals and Applications (Artech House, 2007) and coauthor over 290 papers. Mingjun Zhang is an R&D engineer for Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, California, where his work is focused on quantitative and automation approaches to life sciences and includes DNA gene-chip and protein microarray fabrication, modeling and control of drug delivery systems, and molecular diagnostics. He is Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automated Science and Engineering, a member of the Nanomedicine Editorial Board. Dr. Zhang is also the coeditor of Life Science Automation Fundamentals and Applications (Artech House, 2007).