Medicine is among many sectors waiting to be transformed by big data, we often hear. Conducting global studies of disease progression, integrating health records electronically, or analyzing petabyte-size banks of DNA sequence data should hasten the pace of medical discovery and lead to faster cures, the thinking goes. Not so fast, says computational biologist Michael Liebman. Health information is only as useful as the thought that went into gathering it. And Liebman says not enough thought is being applied to what data should be collected in healthcare. More
Tag Index / Showing 1 - 10 of 11 results for “healthcare”
How the FDA’s Best Intentions Are Slowing the Genomics Revolution
Even as life-science companies pound out DNA sequencing improvements fast enough to make the computing industry look downright sedentary, the industry has been hindered in implementing its many advances so they can help patients in clinical settings. One major cause is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has asserted it will regulate these next-generation sequencing tools—but has not yet decided what will be regulated, how evaluations will take place, or when this oversight might kick in. With widespread uncertainty about the regulatory environment, companies developing genomic products for clinical use have been in limbo, and the venture capitalists who haven’t fled the space are tightening their belts. More
Plans to Digitize Health Records Draw Skepticism
As the medical industry strives to integrate new technology to improve services and outcomes, venture capital funding for healthcare IT has tripled in the last three years, according to a story by WNYC's Mary Harris. Now, the federal government is preparing to pump $29 million into efforts to digitize healthcare records, with Obamacare ready to penalize providers who don't conform. But Ross Koppel, professor of sociology and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has doubts about just how efficient and cost-effective the transition to digitized record-keeping will be. More
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Healthcare of the Future: Connected and Mobile
The U.S. healthcare industry has come a long way in recent decades in using telecommunication services to improve patient care. Sick or injured people in remote areas such as the South Pole and on cruise ships can get evaluated by specialists thanks to advancements in technology. More doctors are adopting electronic health records to manage patient care, and more patients have access to those records via Internet-based systems. More
Americans Give Computer Industry Top Favorability Rating
In a recent Gallup poll ranking overall public perception of a wide range of U.S. industries, the computer industry topped the list, with a net 64 percent positive response. The oil and gas industry ranked dead last, with a net -39 percent. No big surprise there. What is surprising—and refreshing—is that healthcare and education were the top two industries in improvement in positive ratings over last year. More
The Emerging Age of Techonomic Health: Self-tracking
Measuring ourselves with finer and finer detail is one of the rapidly-developing trends that suggests big changes afoot in how we will conceive of medical diagnosis and treatment. It should lead to more intelligent identification of what leads to various medical conditions, and throw much current medical research into a new light. In effect people will be able to begin to conduct p2p drug effectiveness tests, for one thing. This interesting article by Quentin Hardy in the New York Times touches on some of the implications. More
Why Drug Development is Failing – and How to Fix It
The information technology industry has been living by Moore’s Law ever since 1965, when Intel co-founder Gordon Moore came up with the rule of thumb that the number of integrated circuits that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months to two years. Contrast this with pharmaceuticals. In a paper published in a recent issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, a wholly different development trajectory was posited, named “Eroom’s Law” (Moore’s Law spelled backwards): the cost of developing a new drug roughly doubles every nine years. More
Mobile Health Apps Not So User-Friendly for Seniors
The rapid proliferation of mobile apps for health could hit a wall not usually associated with smart phones – they may be too hard to use by the patients that need them most. In a paper slated for presentation at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual meeting (Oct 22-25, Boston), researchers Laura A. Whitlock and Anne Collins McLaughlin of North Carolina State University warned that self-monitoring apps for diabetics are often not user-friendly for older patients. More
Why Techonomy?: A Manifesto
We believe in the potential of technology to make the world a happier, healthier, wealthier, and more peaceful place. Techonomy's name embodies our beliefs and our mission—it combines the words "technology" and "economy" because technology has become a central part of the economy in which we operate and the society in which we live. Today technology is inextricably entwined with just about every activity that humans undertake. We embrace that fact, and seek as a company to help the world take advantage of it. More
Should the FDA Regulate Medical Apps?
At the Consumer Electronics Show last January, the seventh most popular gadget in a popular vote was a wireless glucose meter for diabetics, Telcare BGM.The device reads the glucose level in a drop of blood on a test strip and wirelessly transmits the results to an online database. Telcare’s gadget is just one of a whole raft of mobile health monitoring devices that have come to market during the past year or two. They range from blood pressure cuffs, pulse readers and other types of glucose meters, but all have one thing in common: they must connect to a smart phone. More
