Meidcal and Tech, The Ultimate Challenge

[Arthur Hanson]

Medical and Tech, The Ultimate Challenge

The smart phone, nanotech and the cloud are poised to upset medical starting in the US due to our crippling medical costs that deliver 37th in the world quality and literally threaten ourselves and our government with already looming bankruptcy and a destruction that no internal(think Civil War) or external threat/enemy has been able to deliver. The Pentagon has stated debt is the greatest threat to the us and medical is our largest generator of debt, also medical is one of the largest budget items for most families when you consider personal and employer contributions. Diagnostics currently take up over 60% of a doctor's time and much of this is starting to be performed at a performance that few doctors if any can match by pairing remote phone images, data provided by wearables and tests that can be done remotely such as a phone image compared to a library of images so large no doctor could come close to using, of multi color test strips among many, many options. These can offer total superiority to a standard in person diagnostic process just on time frame alone for an in person diagnostic is in a very limited time frame in an expensive high cost hospital/office environment. Remote testing can be over months and even years and has the capability of spotting even the shortest aberration.

This offers another massive wave of innovation as Silicon Valley has led the world and morphed many times before as various technologies have matured to become low cost commodity products. This wave will not only be built on mature technologies and business models, but entirely new ones. Wearables, implantable/injectables, and as yet unthought of devices, tests, monitoring and diagnostic methods will offer a whole new frontier for the semi/nanotech sector.

Apple, Amazon and many others are already making moves in this area that will encompass everything in the nanotech sector from processing, memory, sensors, power sources, communications to entirely new business models built on what we have now and what we will develop in the future. We will even be able to find links between learning and our physical being that will enable us to advance even faster than we are now. Adding cloud based AI/ML to this mix will only speed progress up and create even more opportunities. Just like the space race created whole new areas of progress and exploration, this movement will create even far, far more than that. This revolution is the only way we can stave off bankruptcy and create large benefits and opportunities, if we can overcome highly financed and powerful special interests that dominate medical and have given us the path to destruction we are now on. It is my hope that even the special interests will realize all will loose if we stay on the path we are on, even them. Collaboration is far better than conflict if we have the wisdom and tenacity to make it happen. This could maybe even act as a bridge to the US/China dispute if we decide to both apply our best to the challenges before us, rather than conflict. The heart and soul of this movement will come out of Silicon Valley and spread to the rest of the world and have even more spin off benefits than the space race has.

Allowing Medicare patients the option of cheaper treatment options abroad would be one way to curtail the power of US special interests and save the tax payers money, while delivering better treatment. US medical in almost every way has become a criminal cartel with ever more limited checks and balances, allowing treatment outside the US would make this glaringly obvious to everyone. Also doing research in China with limited regulatory hurdles and FDA oversight would also be an option to break the strangle hold of special interests and speed up progress at the same time. In medical in the US, politics trumps efficiency, cost and technology to the detriment of everyone.

Comments, thoughts and additions solicited and welcome

 

[smeyer0028]

I assume you expected some answer. The solution that may now happen is Medicare for all. Studies show 60% of US medical costs are caused by insurance overhead. Also the current US insurance system rewards unnecessary procedures. Medical care is already very efficient given the huge variations in people and diseases. Europe with single payer systems results are better than the US and much cheaper. The Democratic winners in US federal elections were pro Medicare for all. The losers were trying to be middle of road opposing Medicare for all. The issue is political one way or the other.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Semiconductors have been an integral part of medicine for many years but have not really been disruptive compared to other industries. I think that disruption is coming to medicine with artificial intelligence. Cost is a big driver but I also think quality of results will be the determining factor. Personally, I think doctors are over worked, distracted, and in many cases asshats.

I had a medical emergency over the summer that came close to killing me. It could have easily been rectified if I had gone to the hospital but I avoid doctors like the plague due to past experiences. So I kept telling my beautiful wife "Let's give it another day" and ended up unconscious in the ER. She now lovingly says that quote will be on my headstone.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Dan, Everyday wearables like Fitbit and Apple Iwatch on steroids are coming and the cost will come down and technology go up at an increasingly dramatic rate as the semi/nanotech industry has done with almost everything it touches that will avoid experiences like you and many others have gone through. I have no doubt an array of sensors would have picked up your declining state. The following is a list of sensors that are here and in the near future that will grow and even these will increase in functionality as the data bases grow exponentially.

Movement/acceleration of all types
Oximeter
Blood sugar
ECG
Blood components and condition
Respiration rate

Inexpensive self test devices

Body fat
Muscle mass
Bone mass
Exhaled breath composition
Body heat and distribution
Skin tone and condition changes through cell phone cam
Medical monitoring tattoos for cell phone cam
Multi panel test strips for perspiration and other body fluids

And this is just a very small part of what we will see in coming years all hooked to AI cloud data bases

Most medical advertising should be illegal, notice how medical dominates more and more advertising including insurance

 

[Daniel Payne]

On September 1st I had a road bike crash, sending me to the trauma hospital OHSU in Portland. There they found that I broke my clavicle and two ribs, punctured a lung, displaced my thumb, and experienced 60 minutes of amnesia. No surgery required and I only stayed one night in the hospital, yet my medical bill was a whopping $24,000.

Another cyclist friend had the same accident in July, but in France, and his bill for the same injuries was just $4,000.

My US medical bill was 6X greater than in France, so this indicates that our trauma hospitals are gold-plating the bills and the insurance companies just go ahead and pay the bills without question or any pushback. Semiconductor technology isn't going to reduce these systemic over-billing ploys by our trauma hospitals, and in fact with more technology like CAT scans the hospital charges will increase because consumers pay for all of that fancy new equipment.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

I assume you expected some answer. The solution that may now happen is Medicare for all. Studies show 60% of US medical costs are caused by insurance overhead. Also the current US insurance system rewards unnecessary procedures. Medical care is already very efficient given the huge variations in people and diseases. Europe with single payer systems results are better than the US and much cheaper. The Democratic winners in US federal elections were pro Medicare for all. The losers were trying to be middle of road opposing Medicare for all. The issue is political one way or the other.

smeyer, could you give me a link to the 60% figure, it sounds high, but I feel the inefficiencies are spread throughout the system, from unions, professional organizations, government mandates and no requirements for personal responsibility at almost every step of the way. Five percent of the people generate a staggering amount of the cost. Gang life, bad diet, no exercise, smoking, drug and alcohol habits, over eating all contribute very significantly to the problem. In short waste, fraud and non responsibility are all very large cost drivers. I myself maintain a high performance diet and have five ounces of vegetables, a fruit, protein and good carbs with every meal combined with daily exercise. For some reason I have also grown an inch after forty five and another inch after sixty sometime. My health is a little bit bizarre, causing me to study health, exercise and diet on a continuous basis.