Digital disruption in health: The $8.7 trillion opportunity in digital health
Technology makes it easier for doctors to perform complex procedures, gives them access to more powerful drugs, and helps them avoid harmful errors. But in the digital age, gathering and using data is just as important if not more so.
In a new report from BI Intelligence, we analyze digital disruption in health care, looking at clinical operations and the role of electronic medical records. We identify the expanded scope of medical care and how patients will use health devices in their everyday lives. Here are some of the key takeaways:
– Digital is already disrupting health care in a number of sectors; electronic health record use is climbing and will near saturation as third parties figure out new and better ways to link and comb through that data.
– Companies are developing all sorts of tools and equipment that doctors and nurses will use to gain new and greater insight into their patients, from connected scales to smart beds, and even augmented reality (AR) glasses.
– There are clear hurdles to disruptive digital technology in health care, including regulation, staff buy-in, and privacy concerns. However, these barriers are starting to fall as the benefits of connected devices grow more apparent.
Source: Business Insider
Will the internet of things sacrifice or save the environment?
“The internet of things will be the biggest, most sophisticated piece of equipment that we’ve deployed across the planet – ever,” says telecommunications expert Kerry Hinton, former director of the Centre for Energy Efficient Telecommunications at the University of Melbourne. “That means that we’ve got to think about the potential limitations on it due to power consumption, the use of rare earth elements – all of that – from day one.”
The problem of energy consumption will be a pernicious one, says Hinton. “These technologies on a device-by-device basis, or even a house-by-house basis, are not a significant additional contribution to overall power consumption,” he says. Far from being energy gluttons though, IoT devices could contribute to substantial energy and water savings, according to Bettina Tratz-Ryan, green IT specialist and research vice-president at Gartner. “Concepts like energy harvesting are a huge component of innovation that the IoT, specifically, can drive,” she says. In addition, sensors will allow smart buildings to ramp up temperature controls when needed, dim lights when nobody’s around and alert maintenance crews to water leaks as soon as they happen.
Source: The Guardian
VR Healthcare Applications & the Digital Health Revolution
Walter Greenleaf has been researching medical applications of virtual reality since 1984, and he believes that healthcare is going to be transformed by consumer VR & AR technologies. Walter says that VR is fitting into a number of different healthcare trends including the digitization of tools, moving from subjective assessments to objective measurements, moving towards patient-centered medical care, and moving away from a fee-for-service to a result-driven business model.
These are all pointing towards the desire to collect more and more objective measurements, and VR technology has the capability to capture and present a lot of this data in entirely new ways.
Source: Roadtovr
Scientists Can Now Bioengineer Lungs, Reducing Potential Deaths Due To Organ Shortage
At this point, it’s no secret that being placed on the organ transplant list is no guarantee of survival if patients are in need of a new heart, or liver, or lung. One of the ways that this problem can be solved is by reconstructing damaged organs so that they don’t need to be replaced, to begin with. In a new breakthrough, scientists have found a new way of bioengineering lungs, which could save thousands of lives.
The breakthrough is courtesy of researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University, Futurism reports. They were able to preserve the vascular network of a lung that they were creating a scaffold for. In addition, the researchers were able to do this by also getting rid of the damaged epithelial lining and then replaced it with healthy cells.
Source: EconoTimes science
Climate-smart cities could save the world $22tn
Putting cities on a course of smart growth – with expanded public transit, energy-saving buildings, and better waste management – could save as much as $22tn and avoid the equivalent in carbon pollution of India’s entire annual output of greenhouse gasses, according to leading economists.
The Global Commission on Economy and Climate, an independent initiative by former finance ministers and leading research institutions from Britain and six other countries, found climate-smart cities would spur economic growth and a better quality of life – at the same time as cutting carbon pollution.
Source: The Guardian