A prolonged or deeper economic slowdown will inevitably be met by further reductions in IT capital and operating budgets, so, even those health IT initiatives that have a demonstrated ROI could become difficult to fund. The IT services and solution providers have to prepare themselves and develop some quick strategies to respond to the changed client behaviour and market conditions in healthcare expected in 2009 and 2010.
For improving the efficiency of treatments and avoiding costs by minimising the risks of false diagnosis, it is important to integrate Artificial Intelligence tools in everyday medical applications. This facilitates more targeted pre-operative planning and reduces the risk of intra-operative complications.
Imagine an RFID tag travelling through the human body such as in Sci-Fi movie Fantastic Voyage. In biotechnology, bioengineering and healthcare, RFID has a lot of interesting research opportunities.
Mechanical circulatory support is an important adjunct to the management of patients with advanced heart failure. Technology advances in this area have improved overall survival. The challenge for clinicians is to translate the clinical evidence into selection of the most appropriate device that will provide benefit for an individual patient.
Nanotechnology has all the potential to become a disruptive and revolutionary technology in terms of its healthcare application. However, there are a few ethical concerns which need to be sorted out before its wide-spread use in healthcare.
Faced with an increasingly ageing society and rising healthcare costs, countries in Asia Pacific are expecting cost-effective medical devices to be developed by local companies.
Soon India will be able to demonstrate its capabilities as an alternate manufacturing destination to China for many medical products.
Advanced semiconductor technology is transforming healthcare. At the vanguard is an entirely new way of monitoring the human body-wirelessly, intelligently and at low cost. Microchip-sized wireless body monitoring systems are offering quality of life for users and providing critical data for healthcare professionals.
Devices containing artificial membranes for the treatment of kidney disease lack the ability to replace or augment metabolic and endocrine functions, which are non-selective and biologically reactive.
Care providers must consider some key factors they need to balance for effective implementation of patient-centric modalities
Medical devices and their components are currently being scaled down to molecular levels and successfully applied in diagnostics and clinical therapies.
Combination products have the potential to respond to the increase in patient needs in a way that may be more affordable, easier to use, less expensive, or more effective than current solutions.
Combination products will enable healthcare providers to treat diseases with localised drug delivery and fewer side effects.
With the application of the generic pharmaceutical model to off-patent devices, the availability of generic alternatives to branded medical devices presents an opportunity for a drastic reduction in healthcare costs.
The constellation of technologies that make up a modern CyberKnife system enable radiosurgery to be delivered with sub-millimeter accuracy to static lesions and better than 2 mm accuracy to targets that move with respiration.
Implanted medical devices present different security issues than traditional information systems, and require different security risk analysis and mitigation techniques
The amount of aero-allergence in areas where powdered gloves are worn can increase 5-10 fold when compared to those where only powder free gloves are used.
Developing a product pipeline is being considered seriously and will be an essential factor for the growth of the Indian pharma market.
Biosimilars will eventually bring down the cost of biological medicines and in doing so will expand the market.
Non-invasive methods to monitor ventilation are valid surrogates for arterial blood gas analysis.