Medical technology is application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices,

medicines, vaccines, procedures and systems developed to solve a health problem and
improve quality of lives. This includes the pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures and
organizational systems used in health care.
Defibrillation is a common treatment for life-threatening cardiac dysrhythmias,ventricular
fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Defibrillation consists of delivering a
therapeutic dose of electrical energy to the heart with a device called a defibrillator. This
depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates the dysrhythmia and
allows normal sinus rhythm to be reestablished by the body'snatural pacemaker, in
the sinoatrial node of the heart. Defibrillators can be external, transvenous,
or implanted (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator), depending on the type of device used
or needed.
Radiosurgery is surgery using radiation, that is, the destruction of precisely selected areas
of tissue using ionizing radiation rather than excision with a blade. Like other forms
of radiation therapy, it is usually used to treat cancer. Radiosurgery was originally defined by
the Swedish neurosurgeon Lars Leksell as a single high dose fraction
of radiation,stereotactically directed to an intracranial region of interest.
Biomedical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts
to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g. diagnostic or therapeutic). This field
seeks to close the gap between engineering and medicine: It combines the design and
problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences to advance health
care treatment, including diagnosis monitoring, and therapy.
Tissue engineering
One of the goals of tissue engineering is to create artificial organs (via biological material)
for patients that need organ transplants. Biomedical engineers are currently researching
methods of creating such organs. Researchers have grown solid jawbones and tracheas from
human stem cells towards this end.
Bioartificial organs, which use both synthetic and biological component, are also a focus
area in research, such as with hepatic assist devices that use liver cells within an artificial
bioreactor construct.
Genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, recombinant DNA technology, genetic modification/manipulation (GM)
and gene splicing are terms that apply to the direct manipulation of an organism's genes.
Unlike traditional breeding, an indirect method of genetic manipulation, genetic engineering
utilizes modern tools such as molecular cloning and transformation to directly alter the
structure and characteristics of target genes