A consulting firm dealing with long-range, leading edge technological innovations and their consequences and implications for healthcare policy and practice.
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alt="http://hfdigest.com/wp-content/gallery/pics/robomed2.jpg" We have predicted elsewhere that the virtual world called Second Life (or something like it) will eventually become a serious venue for health care services and delivery. IBM seems to think along similar lines, and is investigating how to bridge between the real and virtual worlds. A key link in that bridge would be more […]
Despite upward trends in aging, population growth, and obesity, an estimated 2 percent drop in annual deaths in the US in 2004 is probably attributable partly to modern medicine. This good news notwithstanding, health outcomes for elder Americans are apparently worse than for elder Britons, despite more than double the per-capital expenditure on health in […]
Definitive results won’t be in for several years, but there is already plenty of evidence pointing to lifespan extension through calorie restriction. But who will go for diets and treadmills when the Holy Grail for the overweight — a weight-loss pill — already seems tantalizingly close. Other items of interest: As concern grows over the […]
A nanoparticle destroys cancer with heat. Is it a drug, or is it a device? As nanomedicine therapies leave the animal lab and head for human clinical trials, it is an important distinction for regulation. A Royal Society appeal to the nanotechnology industry to disclose its safety testing procedures has fallen on essentially deaf ears […]
In a major milestone for regenerative medicine, the regeneration of torn knee ligament has been achieved in dogs. Despite its slow start, another form of regenerative medicine — gene therapy — is advancing, with a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy underway, and with the discovery of the genetic foundation for fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), […]
The end is in sight for what is probably the last non-digital device in the doctor’s black bag — the sphygmomanometer, the device for taking blood pressure. Similarly, the medical lab’s venerable optical microscope is under threat from a new scanning device. Other devices reported recently: An implantable drug dispensercontrolled externally by wireless signals has […]
Two potential cures for Type I diabetes are in or about to begin clinical trials. It would be needless to say that this could have a huge impact not only on the patients but also on the healthcare system as a whole, were it not for the fact that people who advocate for massive spending […]
Telemedicine “is going to become as common as a cell phone in our industry,” a US health official predicts. There is growing evidence that he is right. Take remote intensivist ICU care, for instance. Intensivists are in short supply, and telemedicine is helping to reduce that shortage. There’s no reason it cannot also reduce the […]
The possibility of tissue and organ regeneration through the use of adult stem cells with the pluripotent properties of embryonic stem cells has advanced significantly, for men at least, with their creation (in a mouse model) from cells abundant in the testes. We have also found a way to cultivate adult stem cells prolifically in […]
A New York Times analysis of factors driving a trend toward complementary or alternative medicine neglects to mention the one factor we would have thought to be obvious: Lack of affordable access to conventional medicine; not to mention access to “concierge” or “boutique” medicine, about which the ethical debate seems as intractable as the debate […]
