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" Advisory Board on Regenerative Medicine According to the Advisory Board, patients who have suffered recent heart attacks are the main target of clinical trials of adult stem cells taken from bone marrow, muscle, or skin to repair heart tissue. The cells are taken from the patient’s own body or from a donor, and are transplanted […]
The genomic advances we wrote about in the last three issues are important contributors to another postmodern form of medicine: Regenerative medicine, the repair or replacement of tissue, organs, and limbs through cellular engineering inside the body or in the lab. In this issue, we digest reports of advances in regenerative medicine from just the […]
Molecular Imaging is the Next Gen Single-slice CT scanners for routine clinical use were around for nine years before being replaced by the next generation—4-slice CT. They lasted 5 years, before 16 and 32-slice machines appeared. Eighteen months later, the 64-slice made its debut, and within nine months a 256-slicer was up and running in Japan. Where do […]
Last December, a consumer watchdog group questioned the legality of advertising medical devices on YouTube, and called on regulators to crack down on such promotions. The videos tout the benefits of the devices but do not mention the risks, according to the group, in contravention of US Food and Drug Administration rules requiring a balanced […]
Accelerating change is the central theme of the Digest, and in this issue we see how pundits have recently assessed change from (1) a global perspective, (2) an IT perspective, (3) a sophisticated healthcare perspective, (4) a simple technologies perspective, (5) a hospital/medical perspective, and (6) a seldom-mentioned perspective of the patient of the future.
Sequencing The target of $1,000 for a complete individual DNA sequence—an individual’s genome—has long been touted as a Holy Grail, an amount assumed to be affordable to individuals at least in the rich countries. Whether that’s true or not, absent market manipulation there is no reason for sequencing cost to stabilize at $1,000. Quite the […]
A day before the start of the ATA (American Telemedicine Association) meeting proper, the US Army held its annual Telemedicine Partnership Series, where presenters show some of the really cutting edge things the army (and navy and air force and marines) is working on. The audience seemed to be mainly people in universities and other […]
Click here to read part 1 of our ATA 2010 Edition entitled “The U.S. Military and Telemedicine”. On opening day, the ATA special interest group for international telemedicine met to hear presentations from two panels on the advertised topic of “issues related to cross-border telemedicine.” The first panel was on mHealth (see yesterday’s Digest for […]
