BMAT Technology & Digital Applications 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which type of medical imaging uses radiofrequency waves and a strong magnetic field rather than ionizing radiation?
- Computed Tomography (CT)
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (Correct answer)
- X-ray radiography
- Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Correct answer: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
MRI uses magnetic fields and radiofrequency pulses to generate images, avoiding the ionizing radiation used in CT and X-ray.
Question 2: In bioinformatics, what does the BLAST algorithm primarily do?
- Predict protein folding structures
- Align biological sequences to identify similarities (Correct answer)
- Simulate molecular dynamics
- Annotate gene regulatory elements
Correct answer: Align biological sequences to identify similarities
BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) compares nucleotide or protein sequences against a database to find regions of similarity.
Question 3: A wearable ECG monitor transmits data wirelessly to a physician's smartphone. Which technology standard is most likely used for this short-range transmission?
- Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) (Correct answer)
- Near Field Communication (NFC)
- Zigbee
Correct answer: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
Bluetooth Low Energy is the dominant standard for medical wearables because it minimizes battery drain while maintaining reliable short-range data links.
Question 4: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) improve care coordination primarily by:
- Eliminating the need for physician judgment
- Making patient data accessible across providers in real time (Correct answer)
- Reducing the cost of pharmaceutical manufacturing
- Automating all clinical decision-making
Correct answer: Making patient data accessible across providers in real time
EHRs allow multiple healthcare providers to access a patient's complete history simultaneously, reducing errors from information gaps.
Question 5: Which data format is most commonly used to exchange structured medical records between different healthcare IT systems?
- CSV
- HL7 FHIR (Correct answer)
- JPEG
Correct answer: HL7 FHIR
HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is the current standard for structured health data exchange between disparate systems.
Question 6: Telemedicine consultations reduce which of the following barriers to healthcare access most directly?
- Physician training gaps
- Geographical distance and travel cost (Correct answer)
- Drug manufacturing delays
- Laboratory equipment shortages
Correct answer: Geographical distance and travel cost
Telemedicine allows patients in remote or underserved areas to consult specialists without travel, directly addressing geographic access barriers.
Question 7: In a clinical decision support system (CDSS), an alert fires every time a benign lab value appears, causing clinicians to ignore all alerts. This phenomenon is called:
- Data overfitting
- Alert fatigue (Correct answer)
- Selection bias
- Type I error inflation
Correct answer: Alert fatigue
Alert fatigue occurs when excessive low-value notifications desensitize clinicians, causing them to dismiss even critical warnings.
BMAT Technology & Digital Applications 2
Which type of medical imaging uses radiofrequency waves and a strong magnetic field rather than ionizing radiation?