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Open Source Surgery

March 13, 2012 in Technology | No comments

Currently, robot-assisted surgery today is dominated by the da Vinci Surgical System.  The device is highly regarded, but is heavy (weighs half a ton) and expensive ($1.8m).  Plus it uses proprietary software, which means that physicians and engineers not associated with da Vinci cannot alter its operating system.

Change is on the horizon, however.

“None of that is true of the Raven. Originally developed for the American army by Dr Hannaford and Jacob Rosen of the University of California, Santa Cruz, as a prototype for robotic surgery on the battlefield, it is compact, light and cheap (relatively speaking) at around $250,000. More importantly for academics, it is also the first surgical robot to use open-source software. Its Linux-based operating system lets anyone modify and improve the original code, creating a way for researchers to experiment and collaborate.”

The ability for researchers to collaborate to improve surgical technology likely will lead significant surgical innovations.

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Technology’s effect of survival rates and health care spending

December 5, 2011 in Technology | 1 comment

How do new technologies affect longevity and health care cost? A working paper by Chandra and Skinner investigates just this question.

The authors categorize medical innovations into three broad categories.

  • Category I. These are the home run treatments. The treatments are highly cost effective for all patients with the disease. For instance, the development of antibiotics was highly effective in reducing pneumonia mortality.
  • Category II. These treatments are cost effective for some patients, but not others. Angioplasty, for instance, dramatically improves survival after a heart attack if administered within 24 hours, but yields no survival benefit and only modest functioning improvements for those with stable coronary disease.
  • Category III. These treatments have small or unproven benefits. Arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee, for instance, was found to have no medical value in an RCT compared to a “placebo surgery.” Nevertheless, 650,000 such surgeries were being performed annually at a cost of more than $5,000 each.

Using this taxonomy, the authors aim to determine how survival and cost change over time due to each type of innovation.

Using cardiovascular disease as an example, they note that 44 percent of the reduction in mortality from 1980 to 2000 was due to improved health behaviors. Another 22 percent of the decline was due to inexpensive Category I treatments such as aspirin and beta blockers, 12 percent was due to Category II treatments like angioplasty, and perhaps 10 percent was due to Category III treatments. On the cost side, the spread of Category I and II treatments appears to have contributed only modestly to cost growth, suggesting a larger role for Category III spending. Despite the rapid diffusion of “home run” technologies like beta blockers during this period, the average cost of saving an additional life-year tripled, to nearly $250,000.

Source:

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Making appointments online

January 7, 2011 in Technology | No comments

After purusing through CNet’s Webware 100 winners, I came across the site ZocDoc.  According to CNET:

“ZocDoc is a doctor and dentist finder. It also lets patients book a time with their doctor online, just like they would when making reservations for a restaurant. Users simply need to drop in their insurance carrier and plan, then where they live. The service does the rest by showing available appointments, and providing the tools to secure available times.”

I have not yet put this site to the test myself, but having a one-stop location to find doctors based on your insurance coverage and being able to make appointment seems like a very useful service.  The service also has a provider rating system.  The usefulness of these ratings, however, depends on the number of people using ZocDoc.  I don’t if these ratings would be as useful as the ones on Yelp or RateMDs, but more information is never a bad thing.

If you find this site useful (or not), let me know in the comments section of this post.

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Will technology kill health care?

October 21, 2008 in Healthcare IT, Technology | No comments

Information technology has the possibility of greatly increasing the efficiency of health care.  EMRs can reduce the cost of accessing patient information.  New technologies can make medical devices more effective.  

But is there a cost to increased medical technology?  GigaOM wonders

“...will widespread diagnostics increase the burden on healthcare? Somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of autopsies reveal diseases other than the one that killed the patient. If consumers test themselves, then tell their doctors, the medical system could wind up treating 50 percent more diseases than it does today — even those that wouldn’t have killed the patient.”

Will treating diseases before they appear increase health care quality or just drive up costs?  On the future will reveal the answer.

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Using Social Networking Software to increase Blood Donation Rates

July 8, 2008 in Technology | Permalink

Takes All Types uses social networking software such as Facebook to reach out to donors when blood is needed in their local area.

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Checking in on my 96-year old grandmother

May 27, 2008 in Information, Technology | Permalink

My grandmother is 96 years old and incredibly lives on her own.  My mother drops off packages of food she prepares for my grandmother and gets her mail, but my grandmother still does her laundry and gets herself ready in the morning. Bringing in some help for her or moving her to an assisted living facility are options, but my grandmother loves her home, sees herself as fiercely independent, and a change would be difficult for her at this age.

Lately, however, it has been getting tougher for my grandmother to live on her own, which is why a New York Times article on high-tech elderly monitoring systems caught my attention.  The article talks about how some sons and daughters have installed motion sensors and a remote monitoring systems to check up on their aging parents.

“Sensors attached to the wall are able to register when Mrs. Trost [an elderly parent] gets out of bed and whether she stops at her medication dispenser, and to alert her daughters to any deviations from her routine that might indicate an accident or illness. The family is updated by electronic report every morning.”

This technology not only is beneficial for the elderly individual (who gets to stay in their home), and for their family (who can more quickly check up on their loved ones), but can also saved costs by delaying the time when the elderly are moved to an assisted living facility.  Elderly concerns with privacy is a problem and people (like my grandmother) would likely resent the monitoring…at least at first.

Nevertheless, as people around the world continue to live longer, monitoring technology can help keep the elderly in their homes and out of assisted living facilities.

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