The observation stage deals with the collection of patient data and information. This data comes from the patient history and from physiological or biochemical data. Data from previous physical examinations, analysis of blood and tissue samples, recordings of biological signals that can include electrocardiograms ( ECGs ), MRIs , CT scans etc., are all examples where computing technology is used.

Since data for medical analysis is constantly changing for every patient, interpreting and organizing the massive amounts of data to be used for diagnosis and therapy is a prime role for computers. Human interaction and decision-making are still the primary roles of the clinician and having access to relevant data is key.

Computers can be of great support in the diagnostic stage. They can organize the data and information that is known. Human thinking always precedes a diagnosis. Clinicians are often not aware of what they don ' t know. Computer generated lists may prompt the clinician to consider an alternative he was not aware of before, or direct him to a source of information that can help with a diagnosis. Computers are playing a larger role in the objective and scientifically-based parts of a diagnosis, but of course there are so many subjective aspects of a diagnosis, the human element will never be eliminated. Computers help clinicians shorten the interpretation time when determining the root cause of a patient s illness.

Therapy is dependent on the outcome of the observation and diagnosis stages. A physician or nurse other than the clinician who made the diagnosis often performs therapy. This is the norm in radiotherapy, surgery, anesthesiology etc. The preparation and monitoring of therapy can be supported by computers. For example, administration of drugs (amount, drug interactions) and monitoring of severely ill patients, are typical therapies that involve computing support.

Computers can also be used to analyze large collections of data derived from many patients to help draw conclusions. This is a type of medical data mining and is often seen in epidemiology, decision analysis modeling and general health care statistics. Accessing different therapies and making those results easily available to all clinicians is an obvious advantage of computers.

Advantech provides scalable and versatile medical computing platforms designed to help handle realtime monitoring needs found in today's eHealthcare and medical environments. The quality, reliability, safety and software support at the point-of-care is making it easier for hospital system integrators to incorporate Advantech's medical and healthcare platforms into their existing or new system configurations.