MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

Author: Miroslav Popov at al.

Historically the technologies forerun the sciences and is immediate associate to practice. Science is knowing, technology is knacking, practice is doing. And as Benjamin Franklin tacitly remarked, "man has always been a tool making animal". The fabrication of tools help development of vocation and thus is prerequisite for advancement of technology. Today the art-media, together with cosmo-media, biosphere and society are the utmost components of the ecosystem, inhabited by man.

On the other hand, science come later than technology and follow alternative paths of development. The fundamentals of modern experimental science are laid somewhere about the beginning of Renaissance /XV-XVI c/. It takes a couple of centuries before science and technology bridge over their fragmentation and start developing a kin. For a long time the scholar, pent in his laboratory, worked without a link with handyman and craftsman, alluded from theirs empirical approaches. Even in the XVII^th century when the industrial revolution was ahead signs of unification of arts lagged. Sci-Trek discovery of Baron Justus von Liebig /1803-1873/, called deservedly "father of modern agriculture", was a turning point in food industry with the manufacturing of first organic soils and manures. Further, T. Edison and J. Swan elaborate the workout of electric bulb, based on the theory of electromagnetic induction of Michael Faradey /1791-1867/. The list of inventions continues.

The same proportions are followed with technology assessment in medical science. It is unthinkable today a performance of even the simplest health care without, more or less, some elements of techniques and technology. Moreover, the cumulating of art effects is the key for a growing and complex health care system to sustain its feedback, and specifically for management and operation analysis activities. In that case health care can effectively lead and utilize discountly its public health purpose, based on progress, innovation and improvement of medical technologies.

CONTENTS

Introduction

I. Health and disease

II. General characteristics of medicine

III. Health care system

IV. Technology in health care: definition and classification

V. Evolution of medical technology assessment

VI. The hospital as a modern art complex

VII. Medical prophylaxis and technology

VIII. Medical diagnosis and technology

IX. Medical therapeutics and technology

X. Medical rehabilitation and technology

XI. Paramedical organization: character and type

XII. Information and communication

XIII. Innovations: estimate and normative regime

XIV. Econometrics

Selected literature