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" Wall Street appears to like the prospects for a brain implantto help stroke victims recover motor and speech skills. It could be on the market in early 2009. An artificial pancreasis undergoing clinical trials at nine international research centers. The discovery of how natural bacteria fighting peptidesare programmed has enabled scientists to program artificial peptides […]
If we can’t yet stave off cancer completely, we can at least kill it. Another cancer-killer has emerged from the Petri dish and is likely headed for clinical trials, and yet another promising anti-cancer drug is in the works. Breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s are coming almost as fast as breakthroughs in cancer. One potential cure could […]
Lost in all the bashing of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) for giving the impression it had created a human embryonic stem cell line without destroying the embryos from which they were derived (it had actually destroyed 16 embryos to prove the principle) is the vital fact that they have shown it can be done, and […]
A massive new synchrotron in the UK is expected to literally shed light on the structure of matter, and lead to better food, medicines, and many other benefits. An FDA plan to make clinical trials faster by allowing them to change while in progress could put a serious dent in this bottleneck to new therapies, […]
Our obvious evolution of bigger bodies and longer lifespans in the past 150 yearscannot be put down to genes, or even just to better lifestyles and environment. It seems likely to be the result of better care in the womb and early life. Bacteriophages– viruses that attack bacteria – have been approved for use in […]
A fellow futurist asserts that while any specific future is dynamic and therefore unknowable, every decision and every plan involves prediction. Yet plans and decisions made by healthcare institutions are typically based on denial, bluster, or panic about the predictions. Take proton beam therapy for cancer, for example. Everything coming out of cancer research today […]
The cost of managing longer-lived patients with multiple chronic diseases is likely to rise — an intuitively obvious statement now backed by research. Telehealth monitoring could attenuate the cost, but the US Congress, the Bush Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are doing precious little to stimulate telemedicine. They may be doing […]
Despite hundreds of false starts, hype, and disappointments, efforts to find genetic therapies for disease are finally starting to pay off. Signs of progress are evident in the success of two drugs that work on people with specific genetic variations. These successes also suggest that routine collection of patient DNA during clinical trials of all […]
Software that provides a reliable second opinion to a radiologist reading mammograms could cut short the young practice of sending scans abroad to be read by cheaper radiologists in India and elsewhere. Given the accelerating trend to more powerful processors and more intelligent software, we predict it will not be long before the software will […]
The FDA’s recent approval of the Abiomed artificial heart implant will benefit only a few dozen patients annually. The next-generation model, which could be on the market in 2008, would fit more (smaller) people, but not enough to make it a blockbuster. The company is hedging its bets on assistive devices that enable ailing hearts […]
