Happy June! With entrance to a new month has come a breadth of new developments in the healthcare space. Here are some of the highlights over the past week.
Something truly wonderful is going on in Africa. If a researcher on a unique project is successful, it’s possible that people there, and other places, will stop dying of AIDS and incurring similar infections. Senior Database Scientist Colin Newell is studying an HIV epidemic in a desperate region of South Africa, where one-fifth of the general population and more than half the young adults are infected, using document imaging technology to build a new database that could help those around the world suffering from HIV/AIDS.
As mobile technology is taking over healthcare, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) is now jumping in. One thousand family caregivers of veterans will be given Apple iPads loaded with apps to help them provide care and communicate with veterans’ physicians, according to a story by Pamela Lewis Dolan. Caregivers will test the usability and utility of VA-developed mobile apps. Veterans will be able to share their health information with any healthcare provider, even if they’re not part of the VA. Known as the “Clinic-in-Hand” pilot program, VA spokeswoman Josephine Schuda told Dolan the iPads and their loaded apps are “designed to increase the convenience of healthcare management and strengthen communication among veterans, family caregivers and clinicians.”
Health facilities station debt collectors in ERs, use more nurse practitioners than doctors to treat patients, and send chronically ill patients home with monitors to prevent readmissions or costly in hospital bills. But a new Black Book study has found that as hospitals, physicians and insurers struggle with shifting reimbursement scenarios and IT investment demands, 84 percent of industry technology executives say they are “actively discussing regional alignment and solution purchases to address stakeholder interoperability and future accountable care demands,” as they anticipate triple-digit spending increases.
Scientists and doctors are using a creeping metallic tool to perform heart, prostate cancer and other surgeries on diseased organs. They’re called snakebots, and they creep through the body just like their cold-blooded cousins, looking for and operating on disease. The snakebots are very fastidious and productive; they carry “tiny cameras, scissors and forceps, and even more advanced sensors are in the works,” according to the story.
For now, humans are still in control. But experts don’t think it’s just a fad – someday soon they will roam the body on their own.
In the U.K., they call them “silver surfers.” Sounds kind of sexy, but what it means is National Health Services (NHS) patients in their 50s, 60s and 70s, not using technology like telehealth, must be encouraged to do so in the interest of a health service which can no longer afford to deal with costly long-term conditions in the same way, according to a senior Department of Health official. In the U.S., a much smaller proportion of older Americans use computers or the Internet compared to younger people. But computer use among Americans 65 and older has doubled in the past 10 years, while Internet usage among that age group has more than tripled, according to the 2011 Pew Internet Project.
