Yager Paul, Domingo Gonzalo J, Gerdes John
Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-5061, USA.
Annu Rev Biomed Eng. 2008;10:107-44. doi: 10.1146/annurev.bioeng.10.061807.160524.
Biomedical engineers have traditionally developed technologies in response to the needs of the developed world's medical community. As a result, the diagnostic systems on which they have worked have met the requirements of well-funded laboratories in highly regulated and quality-assessed environments. However, such approaches do not address the needs of the majority of the world's people afflicted with infectious diseases, who have, at best, access to poorly resourced health care facilities with almost no supporting clinical laboratory infrastructure. A major challenge for the biomedical engineering community is to develop diagnostic tests to meet the needs of these people, the majority of whom are in the developing world. We here review the context in which the diagnostics must operate, some of the appropriate diagnostic technologies already in distribution, and some emerging technologies that promise to address this challenge. However, there is much room for innovation, adaptation, and cost reduction before these technologies can impact health care in the developing world.
传统上，生物医学工程师根据发达国家医学界的需求来开发技术。因此，他们所研发的诊断系统满足了资金充足的实验室在高度规范且经过质量评估的环境中的要求。然而，这些方法并未满足世界上大多数传染病患者的需求，这些患者最多只能获得资源匮乏的医疗保健设施，且几乎没有配套的临床实验室基础设施。生物医学工程界面临的一个重大挑战是开发诊断测试，以满足这些人的需求，其中大多数人生活在发展中世界。我们在此回顾诊断必须运行的背景、一些已在推广的合适诊断技术以及一些有望应对这一挑战的新兴技术。然而，在这些技术能够对发展中世界的医疗保健产生影响之前，仍有很大的创新、调整和降低成本的空间。
