The future of medicine: 2012 edition
Livescience.com has a list of five expected medical advances for the year 2012, and they are:
- the use of vaccines in cancer treatment (not just for prevention)
- better vaccines for malaria
- better air quality regulations
- cheaper life-saving drugs
- clearer consumer information regarding health insurance plans and the nutritional content of food
What I like about this list is that it is partially focused on prevention/pro-action and not just reactive health care (which is frequently more expensive and less efficient). All good things: giving consumers more (and more comprehensible!) information regarding the food they purchase and eat, cheaper medication (such as drugs for diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease), clear summaries and comparisons of health care plans, a wider variety of cancer treatments (which may end up being less invasive and with fewer side effects), and better vaccines for life-threatening illnesses like malaria.
2012 may have a lot to look forward to!
3D printer used to make bone-like material
An amazing new medical inkjet was created by Washington State University; a 3D printer that creates bone-like structures. The bone like material can be used for a number of procedures such as dental and orthopedic work. Testing is still being done however; results have been promising, showing success in rats and rabbits. Amazing innovation!
Technology to bridge language barriers
Barriers such as access to care, no health insurance, and language create big dents in our health system and keeps patients from receiving the treatment they need. The Howard County General Hospital unveiled a tool that will stream videos to provide live interpretation services to patients. This service will be instantaneous and will cater to 170 languages including Spanish, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and even deaf communities. The tablets access networks of interpreters and goes as far as reading patients body language and other visual cues to assist in accurate interpretations. This is a great tool to remove health barriers which prevent patients from receiving proper care.
What a concept: human-friendly hospital rooms
Michael Graves designed this bedside table with patients in mind
I've always found it a little odd that patients (disabled, blind, chronically ill, etc.) aren't consulted when hospitals, rehab facilities and doctor's offices are designed. I actually wonder if they're considered at all. I've gone to dermatologist appointments in the winter in a brand-new state of the art building that is frankly, too cold to be in fully clothed. Rooms with walls made of glass, floors of icy tile, and soaring 15+ foot ceilings aren't the best place to have a full body scan. I can't imagine being a patient going through chemo or radiation and having to be in that building multiple times a week. While I think natural light and colorful artwork definitely helps overall health and healing in an aesthetic way, there are other things to consider (like having rugs in the rooms where barefoot patients are waiting for 40 minutes to see a doctor in the middle of winter).
Renowned architect Michael Graves gave a talk regarding hospital and exam room design at the 2011 TEDMED conference, where he highlighted a lot of these issues, and gave numerous ideas for improvement and change. This article and the video of the talk itself (also at the link) are worth visiting, because it gives the perspective of a patient who is also a designer - one, in fact, who has spent his life integrating form and function. He is one of few people in the position to be able to see both sides of this issue, and be the one to know how to fix it. Now paralyzed and wheelchair-bound from an extremely rare infection, Graves can look around and see where current hospital and rehab center design has gone wrong. It may be that he is the one to show how to keep the bright, colorful and sensory-pleasing elements of current modern architecture, and incorporate sensible, patient-friendly features as well.
Breakthrough medical gadgets: The future of healthcare hardware
In today’s society, our technological abilities advance on a daily basis and health technology is no exception. A group of developers gathered for a meeting to present some of the new innovative gadgets and healthcare hardware. The gadgets have potential to changemedical training and improve health with a simple click of a button. Some of the gadgets described in the article include the Xiaflex Injection Trainer-rubber dummy models that assist in training physicians with procedures such as injecting enzymes into diseased tendons, the AccuVien AV 300 which scans for thick blood vessels and projects them onto a patient’s skin allowing professionals to easily locate vessels, the EarlySense Monitoring system which is a bed that monitors your vital signs and alert nurses when someone who is not allowed up has gotten out of bed, and many others
Many of these items are already present in hospitals and have begun to assist health professionals. It is interesting to watch the progression of these gadgets as well as the production of new ones and how they will change our healthcare system.
New social media tool for students and surgeons
Surgery Theater is the first online social media educational portal for all surgical procedures. The site can be used to watch live surgical procedures and conferences, medical document sharing, exploring new surgical techniques, and receiving information on the most up-to-date surgical innovations. This is a great medical education resource for students but can also be used for patients looking to get more information on upcoming surgical procedure. This is a great new educational tool for surgeons, students, and patients.
Hospital gowns that can transmit data to physicians
This is a really interesting article about what the future of medicine may look like. Ohio State University is trying to create communication devices from basic everyday essentials such as clothing. Besides possible benefits of communication for soldiers and wireless monitoring, this devise will be a hospital gown that will have the ability to transmit data such as heart rates to a physicians or nurses computer. This devise can also be used in patient’s homes to monitor their health status after surgery, a procedure, or every day activities.
With such technological advances, we can only dream of what will be available to improve health in the future. This may be a great tool to allow sick patients to live in the comfort of their own home, with the same monitoring ability they receive in a hospital.
Putting people before profits
A fascinating article from The Atlantic about the California-based CareMore healthcare group, which uses unorthodox methods to increase efficiency and quality of care to its patients. CareMore sees and treats elderly patients, and focuses on increasing compliance and tackling the problems that keep older adults from making appointments (by providing a free car service), keeping up with vitals and diet/exercise regimens (by phoning or visiting them at home and having scales, BP cuffs and other readers send statistics right to the office from the patient's home), and filling or refilling prescriptions (by providing daily pill box sorters and pre-set reminder alarms for free)
And, CareMore has better outcomes and lower costs than many other providers:
CareMore, through its unique approach to caring for the elderly, is routinely achieving patient outcomes that other providers can only dream about: a hospitalization rate 24 percent below average; hospital stays 38 percent shorter; an amputation rate among diabetics 60 percent lower than average. Perhaps most remarkable of all, these improved outcomes have come without increased total cost. Though they may seem expensive, CareMore’s “upstream” interventions—the wireless scales, the free rides to medical appointments, etc.—save money in the long run by preventing vastly more costly “downstream” outcomes such as hospitalizations and surgeries. As a result, CareMore’s overall member costs are actually 18 percent below the industry average.
A very interesting case study in "upstream" interventions.
Physicians and social media
Social media is a great way for physicians to communicate with patients outside medical facilities. However, according to this article, physicians are not very likely to use social media as a tool to communicate with their patients. Physicians are reluctant to be Facebook friends with their patients, even though there are many great uses that physicians can take advantage of by using social media to reach out to their patients. The article states that nearly a third of physicians who participated in this study have been sent a “friend” invitation on Facebook but have declined. There are constraints that keep physicians from accepting patients as friends and communicating with them outside of the office. There are liability issues, privacy issues, and no reimbursement for the time physicians spend on patient interaction.
It is sad to see such statistics when social media can contribute a great deal to patient outcome improvement and patient-physician interaction.
Updates on Dr. Watson
Dr. Watson, I presume?
It looks like Watson-esque computers could begin to be used in nations like India (with a rapidly-growing population and a dearth of doctors and healthcare providers to serve it) within 1-2 years. Seems like the perfect place to start: both in affluent areas of the country where people happily take on new technologies (at times even quicker than in the West), or in poorer areas where medical assistance is desperately needed.
I particularly like this explanation, by Dr. Manish Gupta, of IBM:
“A doctor is essentially doing something analogous to what a person does on a quiz show: questions that are asked on the quiz show are parallel to a patient coming in and describing his problem. There may be medical test reports, descriptions of the problem and the current state. In confusing or ambiguous situations, doctors rely on literature they had read in school or current medical developments and their own experience before coming out with one or more hypotheses (of what the disease could be).”
Similar to the way physicians have adopted lab testing equipment, smart phone apps, and Up to Date, for example; these "Watson, MDs" will soon be utilized as tools of the healthcare trade.
And at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, steps are being taken to this end for the US market as well. Speech recognition programs are being integrated with the question-answering and data-mining capabilities of Watson to develop an "examining room" or "bedside" version. Early adopters may be able to start to utilize the tool in 2013.