Abstract: Medical professionals diagnose conditions and prescribe treatments or tests based on a process called a clinical pathway. The criteria within the pathway are largely memory-based. The system here manages the process and allows the physician or other health care professional to focus on decision making and patient care using clinical pathways programmed as spheres in a network connected by business rules.

Abstract: A plant container in which full-color information useful to a retailer and consumer is printed over an area on the pot. The pot may be used to both grow and sell the live plant; alternatively, the pot may be used as a pot cover. The container is made of a durable material, and the printed area includes a plurality of colors to provide an attractive full-color display. A four-color printing process may be used. The printed area may include sufficient information to allow sale by a retailer without additional information and labels. The container can provide advantages such as: 1) a consumer can efficiently and immediately access useful information; 2) information is implemented onto the container itself, and therefore cannot get lost or separated; 3) a manufacturer, distributor, and dealer avoids labeling costs; and 4) a pleasing appearance is presented to customers.

Abstract: A self-guiding, self-centering endoscope system provides for the advance of a head of the endoscope through the lumen of an internal organ with minimal discomfort to the patient in which use of anesthesia is substantially eliminated. The guiding system is implemented through an algorithm controlled computer processing of 136 coordinate sectors of an electronic mask applied to a video output of the endoscope camera. This output is digitized by a video processing unit and fed into a computer module in which the algorithm compares derived gray scale values of the sectors with a pre-set gray scale parameter to differentiate between levels of varying reflectivity within and upon the walls of the lumen to, thereby, ascertain the best path for the head of the endoscope. Through the use of X- and Y-axis servo-amplifiers and motors, a real time correction of the position of the endoscope head is obtained relative to the center of the lumen.