A consulting firm dealing with long-range, leading edge technological innovations and their consequences and implications for healthcare policy and practice.
More
alt="http://hfdigest.com/wp-content/gallery/pics/robomed2.jpg" Renewed interest in pilotless passenger planes should at least make one think about the possibility of surgeonless surgical robots. Making them “look and feel” like real surgeons is the job of social roboticists. However, robots that don’t need to interact with people, such as the robot bench scientist, probably don’t need such an extreme makeover. […]
Future medical technologies are a wild card in the context of healthcare policy and strategic planning only to the extent they are not understood and their likely impacts not seriously studied. Technology’s impact on drug discovery, at least, is now better understood, and the industry is taking some of the steps needed to reverse the […]
Given that patients sometimes lie to their doctors, with potentially devastating results, perhaps there’s a place for brain fingerprinting in medicine. There is definitely a place for the marked improvement in early-stage ovarian and cervical cancer diagnoses promised by trial successes of a new blood test and a “DNAwithPap” test. Plus: Light could be used […]
The skepticism of oil and gas people toward the imminence of hydrogen power is not helped by GM’s recent reaffirmation that it will be selling hydrogen cars within six years, and by a breakthrough that could be the start of a home-based fuel production/distribution system. While RFID trials in a German supermarket grind to a […]
The first prototype has been unveiled of another serious effort to turn the Internet into a guru able to answer almost any question put to it. If the question is just about someone’s interpersonal relationships as revealed by the Internet, IBM already has the answer, but it will cost you. In a less controversial application […]
Worlds of the real and virtual are merging for fun, psychotherapy, and global hegemony. Batman and Barbie cavort in sync with the action on TV and in DVD movies, families at home play Wheel of Fortune alongside studio contestants, phobic patients face real fears in virtual environments, and the Pentagon plays war games in a […]
Imaging is adding therapeutics to its diagnostics capability. It can not only diagnose a speech disorder or Alzheimer’s, but also monitor whether and how well the therapies are working. One therapy it might soon be monitoring is a genetic cure for Alzheimer‘s, which has worked in mice. It will likely also soon be monitoring stem […]
The US Army is re-introducing the pack mule; only, it’s in the form of a robot dog. It may soon be hard to justify sending humans into battle or any dangerous situation, including the ocean depths, where an underwater robot can now explore all by itself, or a disaster site, where flocks of robot hummingbirds […]
Accelerating technological advances suggest a need for reconsideration of projected long-term medical staffing shortages. Projections of a shortage of funds for drug development could also benefit from revision in the light of the emergence of more powerful, less costly drug development technologies. But shortages of funds for hospitals are real, forcing some to resort to […]
Another improvement to miniature fuel cells brings them closer to powering your cell phone, or to the doctor’s pen-sized combination phone, PDA, ultrasound scope, and diagnostic lab chip. Maybe they’ll throw in the capability to tell the doctor how a patient is really feeling. It’s probably too much to hope, but for nostalgia’s sake, perhaps […]
