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Health care and engineering are among the fast growing fields of research and education as it promotes collaboration between scientists and engineers. Traditional careers in electrical engineering or computer engineering cross paths with healthcareto create healthcare engineering.This is the use of engineering methods and skills to solve healthcare problems. This field combines knowledge, practices and methods from economics, operation research, design, and communication and computer science to help in healthcare research.
Healthcare engineers integrate with medicals professionals and develop methodologies and tools to deliver cost effective and secure healthcare services. Engineers help to generate hypotheses, predict models and develop algorithms for computation purposes that assist in theimplementation of tools.
Utility efficiency
Engineering in health care provides improved designs for medical and other facilities. One of the high costs in healthcare delivery is the energy being used in the industry. The good news is that new engineering designs save on energy. Efficiency in new energy technology creates savings in heating, lighting systems, ventilation, optimal facility operation, air conditioning and so on.
Pressure ulcers
Engineering contributes tremendously to risk evaluation, analysis and diagnosis. Medical engineering helps inprevention of pressure ulcers that are caused by prolonged periods of unrelieved pressure. This issue is common with patients who normally have limited mobility and low level of sensory perception. In most cases, pressure ulcers are brought about by deep tissue deformation, which impacts on blood flow and internal anatomy. Engineering has helped to come up with devices thathelp in reducing pressure in patients.
Detection of eye tumors and epilepsy
Engineering designs have helpedin diagnosis and detection of eye tumors. The diagnostic devices that helped in early detection of tumors before may miss tumors not be detectable by the normal ultrasound imaging or magnetic resonance imaging. This new device locates the tumor by focusing on the temperature distribution on the eye surface by use of thermographs.
Healthcare engineering aids in thediagnosis of epilepsy by use of electroencephalographic tests. This test helps in thediagnosis of epilepsy based on data about the patient’s brain and patient’s phenomena. Though there has been no breakthrough in development of an effective tool for detection of seizures, research is still in process to create a system for early warning of seizures.
Surgical procedure efficiency
Fear and worry about the accuracy and the time taken to accomplish certain complex procedures are some of the primary concerns raised by average people during discussions on medical treatment. The medical fraternity is now benefiting from the improved surgical protocols that have come about because of reduced surgery duration. The introduction of design-structure Matrix simulations to create efficiency in surgical procedures is good examples of how engineering and healthcare combine to generate quality results.
Medical informatics
The application of healthcare engineering techniques is currently in use to help solve emerging problems. Healthcare professionals are now able to integrate engineering skills, concepts and knowledge to create solutions. Healthcare and IT industries, healthcare engineers,work hard to develop data-driven tools, approaches, and methodologies to deliver cost-effective results through leveraging informatics.
Progressive research
Healthcare and engineering professionals are engaged in progressive research in generating hypotheses, modeling, computer aided design and optimization within the medical field. Engineering experts in collaboration with healthcare professionals have been able to come up with computational algorithms to help with design and implementation of tools and to align them to healthcare data.