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 gene variant has been found that accounts for the difficulty some smokers have in quitting; and genetic tinkering has given rats prodigious memories. Gene for Smoking The discovery of a variant of the gene that encodes an enzyme which assists the metabolization of nicotine and therefore makes it especially hard for some smokers to […]
The space program brings us a fast and relatively inexpensive way to detect subtle changes in cardiac patients before there are any symptoms. A haptic system under development will enable physicians to palpate a patient telemedically, over the Internet. A wand waved over a patient detects tumors. It’s not magic, but it is almost straight […]
Korean researchers have improved on their earlier method to increase the viewing angle of 3-D displays, but the Japanese are not holding their breath — Sharp’s 3-D laptop goes on sale next month. And 3-D ultrasound, invented by a Japanese 20 years ago, is likely to become ubiquitous within five years. Biochips (a.k.a. microarrays) are […]
In one form or another and under one name or another, cyborgs were all over the media this past month, with reports of: A robot with a rat neuron brain, Bionic kidneys and livers, Bionic eyes for the blind, Brain-computer interfaces for the disabled, Artificial gills for aquatic cyborgs, and Exomuscles giving us the strength […]
An intelligent personal secretary — that could double as a personal physician — on which the U.S. Defense Department has lavished a $29 million down-payment could very well, like the best secretaries, also read your mind. Meantime, in the basement of your computer, where the operating system hums away, autonomous guards will fend off any […]
It may not be long before we can instantaneously map your atomic structure and teleport you across the planet (but we will have to kill you first.) We can already map the molecular structure of disease-agent proteins, like that for SARS, in a matter of weeks, thanks to X-ray crystallography. Mapping is also accelerating our […]
Human arteries have been grown from scratch in the lab. Of practical benefit in its own right, this development further opens the door to the production of lab-grown whole organs. A 3-D printer is being used to build replacement arm bones for patients, right on the spot in the operating room. Superstrong conductive nanowires might […]
Personalized medicine has been hailed for years as the medicine of the future. The future has arrived, in the form of trial successes with a pharmacogenomic test for determining optimum drug treatment for individual cancer patients, and with monoclonal antibody and anti-angiogenic drugs for: Lung cancer, Colon cancer and asthma, Thyroid cancer, and even A […]
Robots continue their relentless, if sometimes misguided, encroachment in healthcare: Robot vacuums, it is now being discovered as they proliferate, double as pets and even therapists. Swarms of mini-robots are being developed to function as chemical and biowar sentries. A robot butcher precise enough to double as a robot surgeon starts work in October. […]
The accelerating introduction of new surgical technologies creates a need forsuitably equipped training facilities, of which there are currently very few. Doctors need to keep up with not just medical technologies, however, but information technologies (IT) also, or risk patients’ taking medical matters into their own hands. IT is too much of both threat and […]
