Health & Social Care eBooks

Mental health disorders are major causes of disability worldwide, ranking among the 10 major risk factors for disease. Professor Dr Chantal Martin-Soelch’s team in the Department of Psychology at the University of Fribourg specialise in the search for risk and vulnerability factors for mental illness, the development of preventive...

Disability is a crucial problem for society: it excludes individuals from full participation in society, education, and employment, and increases their dependency on social security and care. Persons with disabilities have lower participation rates in the labour force than those without. Work is important: good work keeps you healthy, good health keeps you working. Since older adults...

High content screening (HCS) is a remarkable technology that allows fully automated cellular imaging on a truly high-throughput scale. In the life and biomedical sciences it is now widely employed to solve questions in fundamental science, providing the research community with novel views on how cells function. In parallel, HCS...

In this second AG – Health Analysis we give thought to a number of key areas in healthcare throughout Europe. Topics that are given thought include: cancer research: chemistry for drug discovery; and diabetes. This ebook includes excellent and topical analysis from organisations such as NHS England, as they discuss...

Lora Ruth Wogu, CEO and Founder of Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Ireland, outlines what sickle cell disease and thalassaemia are and why screening in Ireland is fundamental Sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia disease are 2 of the major genetic blood disorders that affect the red blood cells. Sickle cell disease...

Muscle weakness and associated poor fatigue resistance is a major challenge to modern Western Society. It arises due to a reduction in the force producing capacity of skeletal muscle with prolonged unloading due to inactivity (disuse), injury or disease. This eBook details more about the quest into muscle plasticity, and...

Healthcare providers are challenged daily to rapidly diagnose and treat life threatening respiratory illness. Ultrasound is a non-invasive, rapid bedside tool that enables providers to quickly identify and treat undifferentiated shortness of breath. The BRIPPED project is a rapid, acute approach to using ultrasound in the evaluation of shortness...

Who has not experienced muscle weakness after a few days in bed due to illness or injury? A report by Professor Martin Fluck from the Balgrist University Hospital looks at the underlying mechanism of inactivity-induced muscle degeneration. In the European Union, around €500bn are sent per year on hospitalisation due...

The economic crisis forced healthcare budgets to be reduced throughout Europe, putting pressure on officials trying to tackle major health challenges. With an ever growing population, addressing these challenges has become a key priority. Health and social care is a key policy throughout Europe, and whether it be the...

Non-chemical cell communication (NCCC) refers to cellular communication that is not based on chemical signals (such as e.g. neuro-transmitters, hormones, or kairomones) but on physical signals like electric current, electrostatic fields, and acoustic or electromagnetic waves. Why is there so little known about NCCC in life sciences? Has it to...

The combination of a sight and hearing impairment (deafblindness) is a disability with little understanding.  In the UK alone, there are currently around 250,000 deafblind people, yet public awareness of what deafblindness is can be low. Deafblindness affects a person’s ability to communicate, to access all kinds of information, and to get around. Deafblindness...

Safe behaviour in a workplace is critical in order for an organisation to run effectible and efficiently. Research by the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has shown that up to 80% of work related accidents are caused by employees’ behaviour.  Behavioural safety is a tool that aims...

Physicians have long been aware of the subtle differences between patients and their responses to medications. The recognition that a part of this variation is inherited, and therefore predictable, created the field of pharmacogenetics several years ago. Pharmacogenetics studies the influence of genetic variation on drug response. Genetic variation is...

With the advent of low cost, high speed, Wide Area Network (WAN) connections, many organisations are realising the cost benefits and service improvements from integrating services across multiple sites. However, anyone who has implemented SITE to SITE private WAN will know that WAN’s are not as resilient as Local...

According to Public Health England, the average person in England is overweight and 1 in 4 is obese. National Director of Health and Wellbeing ay PHE believes that if we don’t tackle this epidemic more effectively, we’ll increase the odds of chronic diseases, which include heart disease, type 2...

Healthcare providers are challenged daily to rapidly diagnose and treat life threatening respiratory illness. Ultrasound is a non-invasive, rapid bedside tool that enables providers to quickly identify and treat undifferentiated shortness of breath. The BRIPPED project is a rapid, acute approach to using ultrasound in the evaluation of shortness...

Cancer is the second cause of death in developed countries, and its incidence is steadily on the rose. In general, since 1930, cancer death rates have increased with age for both males and females, and the age-specific occurrence for cancer was similar for both genders. Furthermore, the 5-year mortality...

SyWiK is the German abbreviation for "Systematic and Participatory Further Education in Hospital". In this context, Pfalzklinikum cooperates with Landau-Südlliche Weinstraße Clinical Center, Frankenthal City Hospital and Pirmasens Municipal Hospital. SyWiK is a social partner project promoted by the European Social Fund and the German Federal Ministry of Labor...

Social and epidemiological changes present major challenges to the health systems of the Western industrial countries and, thus, also to the German health system. This goes along with the strengthening of the position of care profession among the actors in the health care sector which gives rise to diverse...

The term ‘fields of the cell’ refers to the fact that electrodynamic fields surround every cell and cellular organelle. It includes fields belonging to all charged cell components, i.e ions and polar molecules, as well as those components generated by cell chemistry. This further refers to the modal of...