Principles of Medical Biology - Lecture 1 Notes

Medical Biology

• Medical: Relating to the science or practice of medicine.
• Medicine: The science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease (in technical use often taken to exclude surgery).
• Biology: The study of living organisms.

Medical Biology Definition

• Refers to a medical specialty that uses laboratory techniques (analysis, microscopy, immunology, bacteriology, virology, hematology, etc.) to contribute notably to:
  • The evaluation of a patient’s health.
  • The diagnosis of pathologies.
  • The follow-up of treatments.

Principles of Medical Biology

• Provides a holistic treatment of the main medical disciplines.
• The basic sciences, including most of the achievements in cell and molecular biology, have been blended with pathology and clinical medicine.
• A special feature is that departmental barriers have been overcome

Medical Biology as a New Profession

• Medical biology, as the new profession, has the power to simplify the problem of reductionism.
• The subject matter covered in preclinical and clinical courses has been reduced by almost one-third without sacrificing any of the essentials of a sound medical education. Thus, it represents integrated information.

Biology as an Information Science

• Cross-Disciplinary Culture: Biology involves collaboration with other fields such as Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine, and Physics.
• Computation: Analytical tools and emerging technologies are used.
• Technology: Includes systems medicine and biological information.
• Systems Biology: Includes a holistic experimental systems approach to disease. Infrastructure is cross-disciplinary.