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 quiet month in computing; just more reports on: The development of ever more powerful yet less costly computer chips and lab chips, including some that partially self assemble; Petaflop computers; and Stoppable lightwaves that promise to multiply computing power by further orders of magnitude. Chip Innovation and Costs A projected 25 percent increase in […]
RFID tagging of groceries is starting to happen in Germany and will spread to the US this year. Supermarket productivity will rise, shopping will be easier and faster, and more people will be out of work. Automation, in the form of unpaid robots, is also set to snatch from low-paid second- and third-world workers the […]
Advanced Cell Technologies has succeeded in producing human embryonic stem cells (ESS) using an ethical (some are bound to disagree) method of growing unfertilized embryos. The potential value of ESS for therapy has again been demonstrated, this time by engineering mouse stem cells into sperm that successfully fertilized mouse eggs and resulted in embryos. It […]
The flagship US computing expo Comdex this year found computing passé and robotics the thing. No wonder: Toyota is reported to be developing a humanoid nurse, NASA is building a humanoid astronaut, Sony’s humanoid child Qrio has learned to run, and ever-more ways for robots to make their way in the world are being discovered […]
A database of four million patient records has begun enabling Mayo Clinic physicians to practice better, evidence-based, medicine; and a hospital is being sued following unsuccessful robot-assisted surgery on a patient, on the grounds that the surgeon did not have enough experience with the technology. Evidence-based Medicine Takes Off at Mayo The Mayo Clinic Life […]
Rationing imposed by a heartless free market deprives up to 50 percent of non-elderly American adults with disabilities of the medical equipment and drugs that would help them. Hospitals also impose rationing; much of it avoidable if hospitals would make use of information technology, which has had major payback for most other US industries, though […]
New diagnostic imaging techniques shed further light on the biological basis for schizophrenia and other mental disorders, and another promises a vast improvement over mammography. Diagnostic microchips are advancing, too, economically as well as technically, with a US$7 prototype lab-on-a-chip quickly able to identify bacteria in blood, and another counting immune cells in AIDS patients […]
More powerful automatic language interpreters are close to reaching the market, including an Arabic-English medical interpreter. And even English speakers need help interpreting the jargon on medical websites. Meanwhile: Invisible thin-air monitors have not disappeared from view. A cheap laser sorts microscopic particlesfor microscopic drug capsules. Arrays of hundreds of micro-syringes could be delivering insulin […]
While a dime sized 2GB hard disk is readied for cell phones and PDAs, quantum spintronics could result in RAM drives that replace hard disks altogether. Other developments in computing: AI is being applied to the prevention of malariaand other vector-borne diseases. Grid computing is a key element of the UK’s National Technology Strategy. In […]
Signs of accelerating revolutionary change this month range from the other-worldly: Preparations for human hibernation for deep-space travel; and another way of freezing light — to the mundane: A health insurer and patients getting to grips with medical innovation; the globalization of disease; the popularization of science; another breakthrough in fuel cells; the open-sourcing of […]
