Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support the medical decision-making process has long been both an interest and concern of physicians and the public. However, the introduction of open source software, supercomputers, and a variety of industry innovations has accelerated the progress of the development of AI in clinical decision support systems. This article summarizes the current trends and challenges in the medical field, and presents how AI can improve healthcare systems by increasing efficiency and decreasing costs. At the same time, it emphasizes the centrality of the role of physicians in utilizing AI as a tool to supplement their decisions as they provide patient-oriented care.
Artificial Intelligence* ; Clinical Decision-Making ; Decision Support Systems, Clinical ; Delivery of Health Care

The Cartesian medical model is leading to overmedicalization all over the world. Modern palliative care, derived from a reflection on the Cartesian medical model, aims to relieve the suffering of critically ill patients and their caregivers. It also focuses on the unnecessary harm of medical technology itself. This paper presents some issues from a case and inspires further thinking and profound understanding of China's palliative care by reviewing the history of relieving suffering, the views and shortcomings of the Cartesian medical model, and the application of life-sustaining treatment and good death.

No abstract available.
Antiviral Agents/therapeutic use ; Hepacivirus/drug effects/physiology ; Hepatitis C/*drug therapy ; Humans

Animals ; Biomedical Research ; Cardiovascular Diseases ; drug therapy ; Congresses as Topic ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; therapeutic use ; Humans ; Medicine ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Mice ; Rabbits ; Societies, Medical ; Specialization ; Treatment Outcome

The explosive growth and advancement of computer science in recent decades have prompted the rapid development and wide applications of imaging techniques in life science, which have brought about revolutionary changes in modern medicine. Nowadays, it is possible to visualize multiple physiological and disease processes, precisely and non-invasively, in a living human body. Modern medicine has even started"reading the mind", to diagnose psychology, behavior and degenerative disorders of human brain. The border between the organic and inorganic diseases in old dogma is disappearing because imaging techniques have"visualized"the neurological and tissue changes of inorganic disorders. Severe burn injury is associated with very complicated pathological processes, which are always at the borderline between life and death. Complete recovery of patients with severe burn injury, if possible, may take years of time. Hence, a real-time monitoring of the disease process is of pivotal importance in early recognition and prevention of life-threatening complications and in assessing the therapeutic efficacy for a less-eventful recovery. Here we review and introduce some potential applications of modern imaging techniques in burn care and research, which may benefit burn patients. Some techniques are still in their early or pre-clinical stage and some are mature techniques in other fields of medicine, which are potentially applicable in burn diagnosis and treatment through our research. We intend to bring your interest to this field which may eventually lead to new revenues improving our clinical work on burn victims.

The field of functional neuroimaging has substantially advanced as a big data science in the past decade, thanks to international collaborative projects and community efforts. Here we conducted a literature review on functional neuroimaging, with focus on three general challenges in big data tasks: data collection and sharing, data infrastructure construction, and data analysis methods. The review covers a wide range of literature types including perspectives, database descriptions, methodology developments, and technical details. We show how each of the challenges was proposed and addressed, and how these solutions formed the three core foundations for the functional neuroimaging as a big data science and helped to build the current data-rich and data-driven community. Furthermore, based on our review of recent literature on the upcoming challenges and opportunities toward future scientific discoveries, we envisioned that the functional neuroimaging community needs to advance from the current foundations to better data integration infrastructure, methodology development toward improved learning capability, and multi-discipline translational research framework for this new era of big data.

Inflammatory bowel diseases comprising Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis have emerged as global diseases. Multiple distinct therapeutic mechanisms have allowed us to increase our rates of achieving remission and reducing permanent disease-related morbidity. However, there is limited data to inform relative positioning of different therapies. This review will summarize existing literature on use of clinical decision models to inform relative efficacy of one therapeutic mechanism compared to the other given individual patient characteristics. It will also demonstrate the value of serologic, transcriptomic (from biopsies), and microbiome-based biomarkers in identifying which therapy is most likely to work for a given patient. We will review the existing gaps in the literature in this field and suggest a path forward for future studies to better inform patient care, incorporating the principles of precision medicine in the management of inflammatory bowel disease.

The epididymis is a single convoluted tubule lined by a pseudostratified epithelium. Specialized epididymal epithelial cells, the so-called principal, basal, narrow, and clear cells, establish a unique luminal environment for the maturation and storage of spermatozoa. The epididymis is functionally and structurally divided into several segments and sub-segments that create regionally distinct luminal environments. This organ is immature at birth, and epithelial cells acquire their fully differentiated phenotype during an extended postnatal period, but the factors involved in this complex process remain incompletely characterized. In the adult epididymis, the establishment of an acidic luminal pH and low bicarbonate concentration in the epididymis contributes to preventing premature activation of spermatozoa during their maturation and storage. Clear cells are proton-secreting cells throughout the epididymis, but principal cells have distinct acid/base transport properties, depending on their localization within the epididymis. Basal cells are located in all epididymal segments, but they have a distinct morphology depending on the segment and species examined. How this structural plasticity of basal cells is regulated is discussed here. Also, the role of luminal factors and androgens in the regulation of epithelial cells is reviewed in relation to their respective localization in the proximal versus distal regions of the epididymis. Finally, we describe a novel role for CFTR in tubulogenesis and epithelial cell differentiation.

In the 20th century, free tissue transfers have been successfully introduced using microvascular anastomosis techniques. Transplants not only include whole organs such as the kidney, liver and lung, but also bone, muscle and skin. However, there are a limited number of organs available for transplantation. This leads to the patient not only suffering from the malfunctioning tissue or organ, but also from the psychological trauma of an indefinite waiting period. The rapidly evolving field of tissue engineering is beginning to have an impact on free tissue transfers including organ. Small biopsy specimens can be grown into a large number of cells. These cultured cells can then be seeded onto biodegradable polymers, which serve several purposes. Firstly, the polymers function as a cell delivery system that enables the transplantation of a large numbers of cells into an organism. Secondly, they create a three-dimensional space for cell growth and serve as a template, thereby providing a structure for the extracellular matrix. These approaches have been demonstrated as practical strategies for the reconstruction of many tissues such as the liver, intestines, heart valve leaflets, bone and cartilage.
Animal ; Biomedical Engineering/trends* ; Bone and Bones ; Capillaries ; Cartilage ; Heart Valves ; Human ; Intestine, Small/physiopathology ; Liver, Artificial ; Regeneration

Knee joint is the largest joint in human body, with the most complex anatomy and the highest demand on motor function. The number of patients who receive the total knee arthroplasty (TKA) grows at the rate of over 10% annually around the world. TKA was developed from total hip arthroplasty, and has been developed rapidly during the thirty years' development. In this paper, evolution of prosthesis types, geometric shape and size of prosthesis and breakthrough in biomechanics of knee joint were reviewed; controversial issues in contemporary TKA studies were discussed; and the development of TKA in future was forecasted.