General Considerations for the Development of Biomedical Devices - Advanced Design and Manufacturing Technologies for Biomedical Devices - page 20

father of medicine. Hippocrates was born on the Island of Cos around the year 460
B.C. and died at a ripe old age in 370 B.C. He is known for having endowed medi-
cine with a scientifi c, systematic methodology and for having defi ned for the fi rst
time the position and role of the doctor in society. Hippocrates possessed a thorough
knowledge of fractures. He knew the principles of traction and counter-traction and
developed special splints for tibia fractures similar to an external brace. He also
designed the Hippocratic bench or “scamnum” to provide a support when realigning
fractured bones.
Although many centuries have passed, the Hippocratic Oath continues to occupy
a prominent position in medical practice.
Subsequently, Herofi lus came to the fore in Alexandria in the third century BC
for his study of the human body by dissecting corpses, which up to now had been
considered sacred with anatomical studies only being performed on animals. There
is clear proof that during the third to fi rst centuries BC in Alexandria, postmortems
were performed for the fi rst time for investigative and diagnostic purposes and for
which very advanced instruments were required.
During the second century BC of the Roman Empire, the most important fi gure
of the period was Galen who stood out for his observation of medical phenomena
and his attempts to fi nd an answer. He carried out post mortems on dead gladiators
in the coliseum at Pergamon. When this empire fell, all scientifi c progress came to
a halt leaving only copyist monks in monastery libraries to act as the transmitters of
ancient culture.
Then came the rise and development of Arab culture with its contributions to
medicine and surgery. Avicenna (980-1037) stood out for his use of cauterisation by
means of a hot iron, an instrument used to destroy organic tissue by the use of heat
and also to stop bleeding. With the onset of the Renaissance, medicine and surgery
was again given an impulse with the appearance of illustrated treatises on anatomy
like the one by Vesalius (1514-1564). These advances continued throughout the
following centuries with the ensuing improvements in surgical techniques as well as
methods of anaesthesia.
However, the main advances in medical devices that came about throughout the
19th and 20th centuries were unfortunately as a result of the Great Wars. One exam-
ple that speaks for itself is that in London alone in the Second World War, it has
been calculated that over 260,000 l of blood were donated.
It is the direct responsibility of those of us who devote our lives to the progress
of science and technology to make this situation change so that in the future such
progress will never again be linked to a country

s military might or be driven by the
need to fi nd a response to the effects of war but instead will be devoted to improving
the life quality of human beings as its main objective.
At present, the world market for medical devices is estimated to stand at over
200 billion Euros and shows an annual growth of around 8 % (growth only sur-
passed by the pharmaceutical sector).
The European Union, as a whole, is the second producer with a market share of
30 %, with Spain as the fi fth producer in the European Union with an EU market
share of around 6 % (Pammolli et al. 2005 ). Different factors and technological

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