Medical Mechatronics for Healthcare

Yi-Hung Liu, David Moratal, Javier Escudero, Han-Pang Huang

Research output: Contribution to journalEditorial

Abstract / Description of output

Advances in the healthcare technology have positioned biomedical technology as a major driver in global knowledge-based economies. A successful healthcare intervention depends not only on the capability or experience of clinicians, but also the adequacy of medical instruments and assistive devices. In addition, the technical aids and assistive devices for elderly or people with severe motor disability are getting more attention due to our aging society all over the world, and they are widely used in daily life. As a result, medical mechatronics becomes an important emerging technology to improve healthcare. Medical mechatronics is the integration of technologies and knowledge from various domains [1], including biosignal sensing fusion, real-time clinical data analysis, electric and mechanical system design, assistive/rehabilitation robot development, and machine/deep learning algorithms. Although medical mechatronics has proven to be successful in healthcare applications, there still remain difficulties and challenges to overcome. For example, most previous assistive devices/robots were developed to provide patients with rehabilitation training in hospital. With the rapid growth of aging population, these assistive devices are required to have smaller size, cheaper production cost, and be safer in order to meet the requirement of in-house rehabilitation [2]. As a result, the medical mechatronic components in these assistive devices/robots need to be re-designed.
The goal of this special issue is to bring together the researchers in these fields and present high-quality research on recent developments on medical mechatronics, and novel applications of medical mechatronics in healthcare, as well as the relevant prospect on opportunities and challenges. The selected eleven papers underwent a rigorous refereeing and revision process. Most of the studies were carried out on clinical data, which provides the results reported in this special issue a high confidence level. Moreover, most of the papers in this special issue include mechatronics and healthcare experts as coauthors, which is beneficial to open new methods and issues to medical experts in this multidisciplinary field.
Original languageEnglish
Article number9675482
Number of pages3
JournalJournal of Healthcare Engineering
Volume2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Apr 2018

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