Medical progress through technology
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Medical technologies that have high initial and operating costs are commonly labeled 'Big Ticket Technologies'. However, technologies with lower initial and operating costs, but which are utilized extensively in patient care, should be considered Big Ticket as well. Some of these technologies are product innovations, because they represent a new product or service. ⋯ Other examples include extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy and resuscitation and intensive care technologies. Differences in the availability of these technologies in various countries reflects financial incentives and disincentives at work in the countries, expectation levels for health care in the countries, and the degree to which the diffusion and use of medical technologies are regulated. Evidence of the cost-effectiveness of medical technologies, and the impact of their use on health outcomes, is rapidly being added as an additional criterion for evaluation of the usefulness of medical technologies in health care.
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We examined how lowpass filtering has an influence on nystagmus parameters: durations, amplitudes, and mean velocities of its slow and fast phases. We experimented with two types of common linear digital filters by using both nonrecursive and recursive filters, and with two types of nonlinear digital filters by using so-called standard median and hybrid median filters. We concluded that 70 Hz as strict cutoff frequency is high enough not to cause errors in the nystagmus parameters when information content in nystagmus signals is filtered above that cutoff frequency with linear filters. Using nonlinear filters good window lengths of filtering are equal to or less than about nine samples for a sampling frequency of 400 Hz which we applied.