Multidisciplinary Approaches to Theory in Medicine

This volume will be a collection of chapters from authors with wide experience in their research field. The purpose is to produce a coherent book that reflects the common theme of theory in medical thinking and multidisciplinary research practice. In this context "theory" relates to frameworks of concepts, facts, models etc that help to inform practitioners (clinicians, scientists and engineers) both within their own fields and as they seek to share dialogue with colleagues from other fields.

The book will therefore be integrative across a broad spectrum of fields within medicine. To achieve this the chapters will be associated with others in a number of meaningful ways. Each chapter will share a number of points of contact that will include at least two of the following:


*similar biomedical area (e.g., immunity, neuroscience, endocrinology, pathology, oncology, haematology, .)
*similar multidisciplinary theoretical contexts (e.g., modelling, analysis, description, visualization, complex systems, .)
*similar multidisciplinary medical issues and questions (e.g., clinical practice, decision making, informatics, .)

· Uniquely explores role of interdisciplinary exchange in the development and expansion of medical theory
· Timely and insightful essays on the growth and development of medical theories from some of the world's top clinicians and medical researchers, including Werner Arber, Frank Vertosick, and David Weatherall
· Assembles diverse perspectives on medicine and physiology from biology, statistics, ethics, computer science, philosophy, history
· Uniquely illuminates the social and historical processes through which theoretical research translates into clinical practice
· Reveals the growing role of technology, especially computational modelling, in changing the nature of Western medicine

Foreword
1. Disorders of Haemoglobin: From Phenotype to Genotype
2. Between Bleeding and Thrombosis or Beyond
3. The Theory of Molecular Evolution and its Medical Implications
4. What is a Medical Theory?
5. Medicine as a Moral Epistemology
6. Theory in Medical Education: An Oxymoron?
7. Knowledge, Arguments, and Intentions in Clinical Decision-Making
8. Analogies, Conventions and Expert Systems in Medicine: Some Insights from a XIX
9. Reliability of Measurements in Medical Research and Clinical Practice
10. Advanced Data Mining and Predictive Modeling at the Core of Personalized Medicine
11. Designs and Therapies for Stochastic Neural Systems
12. Mining Scenarios for Hepatitis B and C
13. Modeling the In Vivo Growth Rate of HIV: Implications for Vaccination
14. A Flexible, Iterative Approach to Physiological Modelling
15. System Biology, Cell Specificity and Physiology
16. Modelling T Cell Activation, Proliferation and Homeostasis
17. A Theory for Complex Systems: Reactive Animation
18. Modelling of Haemodynamics in the Cardiovascular System by Integrating Medical Imaging Techniques and Computer Modelling Tools
19. Vasopressin and Homeostasis - Running Hard to Stay in the Same Place
20. Mathematical Modelling of Angiogenesis and Vascular Adaptation
21. Towards Understanding the Physical Basis of Re-entrant Cardiac Arrhythmias