“We lack any serious capacity to scan for future events beyond what is coming onto the market in the next 12 months. We must develop that capacity, or suffer chaos,” says a healthcare technology writer. Health Futures Digest is about giving you that capacity and suggesting some of the questions you should be asking; such […]

It is over 300 years since R�mer scientifically (though inaccurately) measured the speed of light, almost a hundred years since Einstein proved its speed was constant relative to the observer, two years since Lene Hau’s team managed to stop it in its tracks, and a month or two since scientists learnt to control its speed […]

Health Futures Digest is less about predicting the success of specific innovations or breakthroughs or discoveries, and more about predicting the trends that innovations help bring to the surface. For example, the discovery of a chemical that gives up to 80 percent more life to fruit flies may or may not lead to similar success […]

In the Chinese character, danger and opportunity spell crisis. The crisis caused by exponentially accelerating technology is epitomized this month by the opportune yang of nanoparticles able to clean up the environment, and the dangerous yin of a world dissolved into a uniform gray goo by self-replicating nanoparticles run rampant. A similar crisis afflicts our […]

The Acceleration section of HFD is intended to give a sense of how things are accelerating with respect to technology in general, partly because general technology is as applicable in healthcare as anywhere else, and partly to give a sense of the context within which healthcare-specific technologies are being developed. This month’s disparate crop of […]