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" A well-known technologist has rebuked President Bush’s “Stalinization” of science in America, drawing provocative parallels between presidential science adviser John Marburger and Stalin’s science lap-dog Viktor Lysenko. The comparison is no doubt over the top in many respects, and seems intended to shock a complacent scientific community into joining the 20 Nobel laureates who recently […]
Two recent deals point to the heady growth of the medtech business, and its convergence with the biotech business. Medtech devices don’t have to have new functionality to be revolutionary. Just shrinking them can have the same effect. Interior rooms in hospitals could be given virtual windows offering 3-D views of the grounds, if claims […]
Software seems to have caught up with the prodigious processing power of DNA microarrays, enabling exponentially faster genetic analysis. MIT Media Lab continues to refine techniques — some sophisticated, some not — to make computers seem more human and likeable by endowing them with fake personality or the ability to read a person’s mood. Such […]
America may be behind the curve in stem call therapy research in general, but that hasn’t stopped MIT from making an important contribution to the research in the form of a robotic technology for identifying stem cell growth media. Proposals are emerging within the biotechnology industry to adopt open-source approaches to drug development, at least […]
If The Graduate were to bump into Mr. Robinson today, the word would not be “Plastics!” It would be “Robotics!” The market for consumer robots will sail past industrial robots in volume by next year, and there could be some six million professional service robots — including care robots — in use by 2010. A […]
Several technologies have been claimed recently as “transforming medicine” and “changing the world.” They include molecular imaging, which is only a few years away from being used in humans. When you align its diagnostic prowess with a menu of highly specific therapies — some of which have already emerged — “That’s the kind of thing […]
NASA has built and is testing an intelligent robot assistant to accompany astronauts as they walk on Mars. NASA is also developing engineer robots that can work cooperatively to build structures in space. Such robots could benefit from an evolutionary algorithm applied to neural networks, which has resulted in robots that learned to play a […]
Vanderbilt University Medical Center is using state-of-the-art information technology enabling surgeons and anesthetists to remotely monitor and supervise activities in multiple operating rooms. The display technology used in the Vanderbilt system “is here and it has the right price point.” It is bound to have a revolutionary impact on how most of us live, work, […]
There is a hint — no more — that the Bush Administration’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research may be crumbling in the face of mounting public and political pressure. As technology magnifies the power of individuals, it is more critical than ever before in history that individuals exercise their power ethically. Yet in health […]
Thanks to an enlightened state government program, a growing number of California businesses are achieving near self-sufficiency in energy by installing fuel cells. Hospitals might want to look into the technology, which is available today. Dow Corning has introduced a conductive plastic that can be screen-printed to produce very inexpensive electronic devices. Solar […]
