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" The acceleration of innovations is starting to blur the line between what is to come and what has already, if only just, arrived. Health Futures Digest started out 18 months ago by trying to tell you what was coming in the next five to 20 years, yet we find ourselves increasingly reporting innovations anticipated within […]
Lots happening; also all over the map: Deep brain stimulation using “brain pacemakers” is showing greater potential for the treatment of numerous disorders as our understanding of brain functions expands. Duke University researchers took advantage of some brain pacemaker implant procedures to experiment in providing thought-control of remote machines to patients. Serious venture and intellectual […]
Japan’s strategic focus on robotics is paying off in the emergence of real products, such as a robotic bath, to meet the health challenges of its elder boom. And they have only just begun. Having already overcome the engineering challenges of robotics — Aibo and Qrio, QED — Sony is founding a new robotics lab […]
Real dissection takes another cut from its nemesis, virtual dissection, as Oregon plans a statewide network of simulation centers to teach anatomy to medical workers. The trend to consumerist care is evidenced by Kentucky supermarkets offering fast, cheap, and convenient medical treatment to shoppers, and by a powerful new cancer risk assessment tool that will […]
Elizabeth Blackburn’s removal from the President’s Council on Bioethics has left the council speaking with a pretty much single and pretty much evangelical Christian voice. Given the president’s declared intent to advance the causes of evangelism through national policy, and given the evangelicals’ rigid opposition to messing with God’s handiwork, then future advances in the […]
Prosthetic devices were prominent this month: A prosthetic knee transmits information about every step its recipient takes; an exoskeleton turns a 70-pound backpack into a five pound load and may soon be helping the disabled to walk; and a wearable (but only just) “seeing” assistant helps blind people read books, surf the Web, recognize faces, […]
No common theme this month — advances were all over the map: Rapidly advancing understanding of quantum properties through man-made matter will enable rapid advances in quantum computing, among other wonders. Toshiba’s 0.85 inch 4 GB drive has made the Guinness Book of Records. Game power and reality moves up a significant step with the […]
Man could have God-like power of life creation in five years. Our creations won’t be too dangerous, some say. As it is, anybody can create mutant organisms for a few dollars today, and dangerous bits of life — artificial prions — have already been created, to advance our understanding of Mad Cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. […]
Everett M. Rogers’ classic Diffusion of Innovations theory might have predicted that physicians would be slow to adopt IT as long as IT gave them no clear advantage. General Electric, however, sees clear advantage in predicting the future. On Prediction The slow adoption of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) prompted futurist Robert Mittman to ponder […]
Vaccine research and trials have been much in the news. An experimental immunotherapy vaccine has eliminated non-small-cell lung cancer in some advanced-stage patients, HPV vaccines in trial could prevent cervical cancer in thousands of women, and a breakthrough in understanding the proteomics of the AIDS virus could lead to an effective AIDS vaccine. Blood was […]
