Doctors are not famours for being the first users of technology. In fact they have the reputation for being old-fashioned. That's often a good thing--they don't get seduced by the latest fad.
But this story is interesting. This is a list of what the medical profession has to cope with right now:
• Need to reduce healthcare system costs.
• Growing incidence of chronic diseases.
• More empowered and educated patients.
• Changing payor dynamics.
• More information available to consumers, primarily via Internet.
• Patient expectations for living a longer, more active and independent lifestyle.
• Consideration that medical errors and infections might be lower with patients cared for outside the hospital contributing to improved outcomes.
• Demographic changes.
• Greater data transparency and benchmarking among healthcare providers and technologies related to cost and outcomes.
• Advances being made in military medicine making their way back into civilian healthcare technology.
• New technological breakthroughs outside of healthcare making their way into industry.
• Technology formerly focused on acute care moving outside of the hospital.
• Changing nature of medicine and roles—Overworked clinicians pushing responsibility to patients.
• Less-expensive medical equipment available to consumers from Asian manufacturers.
• Interest among providers and payors in improving patient adherence and compliance.
• More cosmetic and elective procedures, self care.
• More options for care outside of hospitals.
• More expendable income among older Americans.
• More interest among manufacturers in anticipating patient needs due to competition.
• Growing demand for healthcare services, spending.
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For at least the last decade, there has been a quiet revolution under way in the healthcare field. Most Americans are well aware of the challenges facing the country’s healthcare system—escalating costs, denied tests and treatments, fragmented care, less time available for a patient-physician relationship, medical errors, inefficiencies, and other woes. However, a number of important cultural, technological, and demographic trends are increasingly putting more control into the hands of patients themselves to manage their health. This transformation has an enormous potential to change how medicine is practiced and how the healthcare system as a whole operates.
In many cases, the catalyst for this change has been new technologies that have taken advances made in the realm of professional medical products—i.e., those used by doctors, nurses, and other clinicians—and modified them for use by patients in a consumer environment. Consumers have always had access to medical devices to meet their basic needs, such as first aid kits or thermometers. But in recent years, highly advanced technologies have been increasingly rolled out to consumers themselves.
Some of the best examples of this convergence between professional and consumer devices are automated external defibrillators (AEDs), blood glucose monitors, insulin pumps, home diagnostic kits, and remote patient monitoring systems. Medical technology will follow a path similar to that of computers. Large, complex scientific instruments will ultimately become small, powerful consumer appliances for communication and entertainment. This convergence zone represents one of the greatest opportunities to manufacturers in the medical technology and consumer health markets today."
"Patients with chronic diseases and conditions are the top targets for most companies moving into the convergence zone between professional and consumer medical devices, and for good reason. According to the organization Partnership for Solutions, in 2000, more than 125 million Americans had chronic health conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, and Parkinson’s disease, and the care of these patients generated direct costs of $510 billion. This number is expected to grow to 157 million people by 2020 with $1.07 trillion in direct costs. Approximately 80% of all healthcare spending will be on this population."
“Caring for individuals with chronic health conditions will be the public health challenge of the 21st Century,” according to Gerard Anderson, PhD, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Much of the increase in these costs is due to advances in medical practices and technology which often turn an acute condition into a chronic one. For example, since 1980 there has been a greater than 40% drop in mortality from coronary heart disease since, but more people are living with deleterious effects of these acute events. The same is true for patients surviving cancer, stroke, premature birth, renal failure, trauma, and other conditions.
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