Medical Mechatronics for Healthcare

Advances in the healthcare technology have positioned biomedical technology as a major driver in global knowledgebased economies. A successful healthcare intervention depends on not only the capability or experience of clinicians but also the adequacy of medical instruments and assistive devices. In addition, the technical aids and assistive devices for elderly or people with severe motor disability are getting more attention due to our aging society all over the world, and they are widely used in daily life. As a result, medical mechatronics becomes an important emerging technology to improve healthcare. Medical mechatronics is the integration of technologies and knowledge from various domains [1], including biosignal sensing fusion, real-time clinical data analysis, electric and mechanical system design, assistive/ rehabilitation robot development, and machine/deep learning algorithms. Although medical mechatronics has proven to be successful in healthcare applications, there still remain difficulties and challenges to overcome. For example, most previous assistive devices/robots were developed to provide patients with rehabilitation training in hospitals. With the rapid growth of aging population, these assistive devices are required to have smaller size and cheaper production cost and be safer in order to meet the requirement of in-house rehabilitation [2]. As a result, the medical mechatronic components in these assistive devices/robots need to be redesigned. The goal of this special issue is to bring together the researchers in these fields and present high-quality research on recent developments on medical mechatronics and novel applications of medical mechatronics in healthcare, as well as the relevant prospect on opportunities and challenges. The selected eleven papers underwent a rigorous refereeing and revision process. Most of the studies were carried out on clinical data, which provides the results reported in this special issue a high confidence level. Moreover, most of the papers in this special issue include mechatronics and healthcare experts as coauthors, which is beneficial to open new methods and issues to medical experts in this multidisciplinary field.