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BackgroundAugmented reality (AR) is a technology that integrates digital information into the user’s real-world environment. It offers a new approach for treatments and education in medicine. AR aids in surgery planning and patient treatment and helps explain complex medical situations to patients and their relatives. ObjectiveThis systematic and bibliographic review offers an overview of the development of apps in AR with a medical use case from March 2012 to June 2017. This work can aid as a guide to the literature and categorizes the publications in the field of AR research. MethodsFrom March 2012 to June 2017, a total of 1309 publications from PubMed and Scopus databases were manually analyzed and categorized based on a predefined taxonomy. Of the total, 340 duplicates were removed and 631 publications were excluded due to incorrect classification or unavailable technical data. The remaining 338 publications were original research studies on AR. An assessment of the maturity of the projects was conducted on these publications by using the technology readiness level. To provide a comprehensive process of inclusion and exclusion, the authors adopted the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement. ResultsThe results showed an increasing trend in the number of publications on AR in medicine. There were no relevant clinical trials on the effect of AR in medicine. Domains that used display technologies seemed to be researched more than other medical fields. The technology readiness level showed that AR technology is following a rough bell curve from levels 4 to 7. Current AR technology is more often applied to treatment scenarios than training scenarios. ConclusionsThis work discusses the applicability and future development of augmented- and mixed-reality technologies such as wearable computers and AR devices. It offers an overview of current technology and a base for researchers interested in developing AR apps in medicine. The field of AR is well researched, and there is a positive trend in its application, but its use is still in the early stages in the field of medicine and it is not widely adopted in clinical practice. Clinical studies proving the effectiveness of applied AR technologies are still lacking.

Display Omitted Tool that bridges the gap between different domains.Clinical trial centred search with simplified access and reduced search time.Intuitive and can be used by researchers without prior training.Access multiple data sources via one graphical interface. For research in biomedical sciences, cross-domain searches through several different databases are an increasingly necessary task that often becomes a time consuming and labour-intense process. This is especially the case when different domain databases have to be combined, for example combined searches in clinical trials registries, publication databases and research databases. The Clinical Trial Information Mediator (CTIM) addresses this problem and offers a novel way for the combined search in ClinicalTrials.gov, PubMed and BioSamples.CTIM was developed based on a requirements analysis and implemented using open source technology. A search engine with a graphical user interface was developed in order to search linked data in the three databases ClinicalTrials.gov, PubMed and BioSamples; thereby enabling CTIM to bridge the gap between different knowledge domains of clinical trials, publications of research results and biosamples/genetic information. CTIM was applied in three use cases demonstrating that information retrieval could be considerably improved in sense for complex queries. These use cases show that more relevant results were obtained and more associated publications and biosamples could be retrieved in comparison to a separate single search.Main advantages of CTIM are identifying related information between clinical trials and publications employing a clinical trial centred kind of search, simplified access to its databases and thus reduced search time. In addition it can be used by researchers without prior training because of the intuitive usage.

An important objective of laboratory management is to adjust the laboratory's capability to the needs of patients' care as well as economy. The consequences of management may be changes in laboratory organization, equipment, or personnel planning. At present only one's individual experience can be used for making such decisions. We have investigated whether the techniques of operations research could be transferred to a clinical laboratory and whether an adequate simulation model of the laboratory could be realized. First we listed and documented the system design and the process flow for each single laboratory request. These input data were linked by the simulation model (programming language SIMSCRIPT II.5). The output data (turnaround times, utilization rates, and analysis of queue length) were validated by comparison with the current performance data obtained by tracking specimen flow. Congruence of the data was excellent (within +/- 4%). In planning experiments we could study the consequences of changes in order entry, staffing, and equipment on turnaround times, utilization, and queue lengths. We conclude that simulation can be a valuable tool for better management decisions.

Increasing demand for parallelism due to out-of-order and multi-threading computation requires fast and dense arrays with multi-port capabilities. The load-store-unit (LSU) of the POWER7™ microprocessor core has a 32kB L1 data cache composed of four 8kB blocks. In a two-cycle back-to-back operation it supports concurrently two independent read and one write operations. Organized in banks of 16 cells each, the two reads operate independently in any of these banks, including two reads within the same bank, even the same cell. A bank selected for write is blocked for any read operation. If read and write collide within the same bank, collision-control circuitry provides write-over-read priority. Each read port provides 4B from 1 of 256 locations, whereas the double-bandwidth write operation provides individual control of 8B to 128 locations.

In this paper, we describe the first- and second-level system packaging structure of the IBM zEnterprise® 196 (z196) enterprise-class server. The design point required a more than 50% overall increase in system performance (in millions of instructions per second) in comparison to its predecessor. This resulted in a new system design that includes, among other things, increased input/output bandwidth, more processors with higher frequencies, and increased current demand of more than 2,000 A for the six processor chips and two cache chips per multichip module. To achieve these targets, we implemented several new packaging technologies. The z196 enterprise-class server uses a new differential memory interface between the processor chips and custom-designed server memory modules. The electrical power delivery system design follows a substantially new approach using Vicor Factor Power® blocks, which results in higher packaging integration density and minimized package electrical losses. The power noise decoupling strategy was changed because of the availability of deep-trench technology on the new processor chip generation.