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 fully autonomous cow-milking robot will leave the farmer happier and the milkmaid out of a job; a semi-autonomous window cleaning robot will take better care of buildings than human cradle crews; and a semi-automatic robotic cardiac catheterization system may be another warning shot across the surgeon’s bow, given the clear trend to increasing robot […]
The U.S. government’s push to get people to move to self-care (see the Policy section) is being assisted by corporate advertising (or vice versa). Implant makers have begun to market their devices direct to the prospective implant consumer, which perhaps helps explain why analysts anticipate double-digit growth in heart and reconstructive implants. Part of any […]
President Bush’s Council on Bioethics has issued a lengthy report looking at the ethics of technologies for screening eggs and embryos, enhancing human physique and intellect, and extending the human lifespan. Though we have some issues with it, it is certainly timely, because even as major diseases stand on the brink of extermination, thereby promising […]
Several competitors are racing to bring whole-genome chips to market, while others focus on smaller and cheaper partial-genome chips targeting specific diagnoses. Genetic analysis already took one big step with the invention of PCR to amplify DNA fragments. In the offing is XDNA, a way to make a single DNA molecule physically much bigger and […]
A new fuel cell from Honda delivers twice the output using half the components of its predecessors. We don’t know if this is the same one Honda is currently testing as a residential power station to run a house and fuel the family hydrogen car, but we predict something like it will be on the […]
As of last month, the world’s second (maybe third) fastest supercomputer is a cheap (US$5 million) Mac cluster. As of next year, one of the world’s top supercomputers could be your desktop PC, thanks to a new chip being shipped to computer manufacturers for evaluation right about now. Photonic computing is not yet ready for […]
It is over 300 years since R�mer scientifically (though inaccurately) measured the speed of light, almost a hundred years since Einstein proved its speed was constant relative to the observer, two years since Lene Hau’s team managed to stop it in its tracks, and a month or two since scientists learnt to control its speed […]
Distinguished medical experts cannot agree whether systems biology (aided by explosive growth in bioinformatics) will produce a radically different kind of healthcare in ten years, or in 50. If the answer is closer to ten, there’s not much time left to prepare. Bioethicists, too, seem oblivious to the inevitable outcomes of bioinformatics and the new […]
A genetic therapy for Parkinson’s patients is in phase I trials, while other researchers have obtained some success in stem cell therapy for a Parkinson’s-like condition in mice. Stem cell therapy has chalked up a real-world success in restoring sight to a blind man. If a DNA therapy that enabled paralyzed mice to walk again […]
Nobody knows what “consciousness” is, but we’re building what we think it might be into robots anyway. We’re also building “female-ness” into some, and finding them smarter as a result. One robot with at least a female name was smart enough to attend a conference and deliver a speech, more or less all by itself. […]
