Future challenges for diagnostic research: striking a balance between simplicity and complexity

Misguided efforts and future challenges for research on "diagnostic tests".

At the end of the second world war, the prime scientific goal in clinical medicine was to make a correct diagnosis. Its importance was demonstrated by the attention it received in medical education. Students and house staff regularly went from the hospital ward to the institutional morgue to see the diagnostic findings at necropsy. The clinicopathological conference (CPC) was a popular teaching...

Striking a Balance

In recent years there has been an increased interest in investigating how technology can be used to aid the millions of people living in low-income countries [2]. Mobile phones are emerging as powerful, affordable and pervasive computing devices that can serve the needs of widely deployed applications in resource-constrained environments. Previous work has emphasized the importance of working c...

Positive and negative feedback: striking a balance between necessary antagonists.

Most biological regulation systems comprise feedback circuits as crucial components. Negative feedback circuits have been well understood for a very long time; indeed, their understanding has been the basis for the engineering of cybernetic machines exhibiting stable behaviour. The importance of positive feedback circuits, considered as "vicious circles", has however been underestimated. In thi...

Clinical Governance: Striking a Balance Between Checking and Trusting

Striking a Balance Between Ethics and ICT Governance

Ethics and Information Communication Technology (ICT) Governance both have their place in today’s business organisations, but can their practical applications present an ethical ambiguity for the IT professional employed within the business organisation? The guidelines contained within various codes of ethics recommend principles regarding the ethical behaviour of individual IT professionals. I...