The Acceleration section of HFD is intended to give a sense of how things are accelerating with respect to technology in general, partly because general technology is as applicable in healthcare as anywhere else, and partly to give a sense of the context within which healthcare-specific technologies are being developed.

This month’s disparate crop of advances includes flying cars, a better way to store the hydrogen that could one day fuel them, “toy” supercomputers that might be used to run their collision avoidance systems, a brain-machine interface enabling the pilot to fly the aircar by thinking, and built-in Wi-Fi to eliminate wires between brain and machine. And in the unlikely event anything were to go disastrously wrong, the pilot’s shattered organs could be rebuilt from ordinary cells converted into embryonic stem cells.

Airworthy Cars and Roadworthy Airplanes

Dozens of individuals and organizations are racing to build a car that flies — or a flier that drives. Advances in information technology, as much as in aeronautics and automotive engineering, have brought the finish line closer for both options.

One company has developed a four-seater VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) vehicle, currently undergoing flight testing toward FAA certification. It will cost early adopters almost a million dollars when it comes out in (the company hopes) mid-2006, but volume production could bring the price down to the cost of a Cadillac.

That vehicle is designed mainly for flying, and to be driven on the road for only a few miles. Another company is taking the opposite tack, with a vehicle designed mainly for driving, but with flight capability when needed.

More powerful and smaller computers, GPS systems, and collision-avoidance systems will enable aircars to fly themselves, and if they break down in flight, a large parachute will return them more or less safely to the ground.

Reference: Dreier, David Louis (2003). “An Aircar in Every Garage?” Technology Review, May 23.

Hydrogen Storage Solution

To get aircars off the ground in the first place takes power, and one day that power could come from hydrogen fuel cells. Skeptics, not surprisingly numbering many in the threatened world of oil and gas, insist it will take up to 20 years to overcome all the obstacles to having fuel cell cars and home power plants. One of those obstacles is finding a way to store the explosive hydrogen fuel safely yet economically.

A multi-university collaboration has discovered a new class of materials called “metal-organic frameworks” (MOF) that overcomes that obstacle and could be in production within five years. Exposed to hydrogen at room temperature and under modest pressure, MOF materials soak up hydrogen immediately, like a sponge. MOF materials are made from low-cost starting materials including chemicals commonly used in sunscreen lotions and plastic soda bottles. They are simple to make, and manufacturing yields are high.

Reference: Smalley, Eric (2003). “Hydrogen storage eased.” Technology Research News, May 21/28.

Toy Supercomputers

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications has built a Linux-based supercomputer out of 70 Sony PlayStation 2 children’s game machines. Including an additional 30 machines bought as spares, it cost a little more than $50,000, and is thought to be capable of half a trillion operations a second. Microsoft’s Xbox game machine might have been a candidate but for the near impossibility of installing Linux on it. Linux has become the dominant force in supercomputing for its stability, extensibility, and low cost.

The real power in the PlayStation is not its microprocessor but a graphics co-processor that can do up to 6.5 billion mathematical operations a second. The NCSA scientists remain alert to other increasingly powerful consumer hardware, such as Nvidia’s high-performance graphics card capable of executing 51 billion mathematical operations a second, so they can take advantage of these off-the-shelf, low-cost technologies.

Though their current model has many limitations, it is already running useful calculations on heavy-duty quantum chromodynamics simulations, a costly process when run on conventional supercomputing resources. Conceivably, such a computer could perform the extremely complex collision avoidance calculations that will be needed by the thousands of aircars zipping quietly through busy city airspace on their hydrogen fuel cell engines.

Reference: Markoff, John (2003). “From PlayStation to Supercomputer for $50,000.” New York Times, May 26.

It’s All in Your Head

Georgia State University researchers have developed a “BrainBrowser” for people to surf the Web just by thinking. They demonstrated the browser at the Association of Computing Machinery Computer-Human Interaction (ACM-CHI) conference in April. It may take 2-5 years for a production version to be made.

It is not clear whether the browser relies on implanted neurotrophic electrodes or external scalp electrodes to “read” the user’s “thoughts,” and as of the time of publication neither the GSU nor ACM websites offered further information on the device. More information might be available via the website of Dr. Melody Moore, one of the device’s presenters at the ACM.

In connection with aircars, one is reminded of FireFox, the novel (and later movie) about a fictional Soviet fighter plane controlled by the pilot’s thoughts.

Reference: Unknown (2003). “Browser Boosts Brain Interface.” Technology Research News, May 22.

WiFi Phones

The attraction of flying an aircar by thought alone would be somewhat attenuated if it involved having one’s brain wired into the aircar’s control systems. Fortunately, that’s not likely to be necessary, given developments in wireless networking, of which “Wi-Fi” is the latest instantiation.

A Maryland hospital is one of a growing number that have installed a “VoIP over Wi-Fi” network over which doctors and nurses make phone calls as well as create and retrieve patient records — all via laptop, PDA, or tablet PC; no phone necessary. Voice over IP (VoIP) is an established technology that enables voice to be packetized as a data stream, transmitted like other packet data such as emails and digital images, and reassembled into voice at a receiving phone. A geographically dispersed enterprise that has a broadband wide area network (WAN) for public or private Internet traffic (most do) can make long-distance phone calls between its locations without paying extra for long-distance phone service. VoIP users already number more than 3.5 million.

Wi-Fi is a wireless broadband technology that provides speeds up to 54 Mbps to users accessing their LAN (and through it, the enterprise WAN or the Internet). Wi-Fi grew from 2,000 to 12,000 installations in 2002, and is one of the most rapid and significant developments in the Internet since the World Wide Web. It is in use in a growing number of hospitals, but unless careful attention is paid to security, Wi-Fi is susceptible to “drive-by hackers” who can detect Wi-Fi networks from a distance and hack into them if they are not very well protected. Cisco, among others, offers Wi-Fi security solutions, as well as Wi-Fi/VoIP integration.

About 40% of U.S. companies are claimed to have some type of Wi-Fi network to cut telecom costs and raise productivity, and the innovations keep coming. One will allow hospitals to tag equipment and track its location using Wi-Fi.

References: (1) Rojas, Peter (2003). “Why Voice Over Wi-Fi Has Telcos Dialing 911.” Wired, Issue 11.06, June. ; (2) Kharif, Olga (2003). “Is a Wi-Fi Bubble Building?” Wireless NewsFactor, May 22.

Stem Cells Galore

Scottish and Japanese scientists have independently discovered the “master gene” largely responsible for giving embryonic stem cells (ESS) their regenerative and therapeutic potential. The discovery could enable ordinary cells to be turned into ESS and remove at least some of the current controversy over the use of ESS, since the farming of pure, original ESS requires real embryos.

The work also adds to scientific understanding of ESS pluripotency; that is, their ability to become any kind of cell the body might need. The joint discoverers of the “master” gene agreed to call it nanog, after the eternally youthful residents of a mythical Celtic land. But they have yet to identify the signal that tells nanog to turn on, so they cannot yet transform an ordinary cell into a stem cell. That research will require more ESS from human embryos, which is flatly rejected by some on religious and/or moral grounds.

Reference: Weiss, Rick (2003). “Stem Cell ‘Master Gene’ Found: Ability to Manipulate It May Aid Therapy.” Washington Post, May 30, Page A01.