Neat ideas in medical care

musicprnt
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 15:49:33 +0000

Posting these simply to share with people two neat things that have been brought to my attention

http://www.opnwatr.io/

Friend of mine was talking about this, the idea of this and other initiatives is to make things like MRI’s obsolete for many diagnostic needs, from what I can tell they are trying to build scanners and such that can get the kind of resolution you get from MRI imaging without the mega expensive superconducting magnets and the like, rather using advanced image processing with simpler scanners (and that is just my impression of it). MRI’s are millions of dollars, require constant upgrades and maintainence, and require those owning them to keep them humming , whether at hospitals or private MRI clinics often owned by Doctor groups), not to mention that only maybe 3 firms make MRI machines and the components.

http://tricorder.xprize.org/teams/final-frontier-medical-devices

This was a neat competition, and again I think it is a solution that no one seems to have been proposing with medical care, the high cost of tests and testing devices and the like. A lot of medicine is routine, and this kind of diagnostic equipment could potentially bring down the cost of medical care. People keep talking about bringing down medical costs, and one of the problems why it doesn’t happen is that medicine in many ways has resisted the kind of improvements in efficiency and productivity other areas have seen (and when I say resisted, I don’t just mean the AMA or people set in their ways, also that it has been very hard to find ways). Anyone who has ever had a lab panel knows how expensive they are, with things like this device on a larger scale it will cause the price to plummet, right now diagnostic labs tend to be an oligopoly, usually lab corps or quest.

Obviously this is still the future, but I think it is the right side of things to try and work on, it won’t totally get rid of doctors, but it will certainly create a more efficient medical care system that doesn’t rely entirely on super expensive specialized gear and lab tests centered in an oligopoly (blood tests and such are already automated, but they rely on specialized equipment made by a few companies that are very, very expensive).

Put it this way, if they really want cheaper medical costs, expensive lab costs, expensive diagnostic machines, human intensive activity will almost certainly make sure that doesn’t happen, the free market competition some propose as the solution requires that there be ways to more efficiently do something.

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