NY Times on insurance falling behind medical technology

Insurers Fight Speech-Impairment Remedy
By ASHLEE VANCE
Published: September 15, 2009
Devices like iPhones and netbook PCs that can help the speech-impaired are not covered by Medicare or insurers.

Technology changing healthcare articles

One on the problems of epidemiology in the cell phone age - "Cellphones' Growth Does a Number on Health Research," By David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, January 12, 2009; Page A04.

And one on rethinking care in the ICU - "A Tactic to Cut I.C.U. Trauma: Get Patients Up," By GINA KOLATA, New York Times January 12, 2009. Doctors are experimenting with radical solutions to ward off the effects of prolonged stays in intensive care units. This article talks about several debilitating effects including that of sedation, which I can believe. Recent dental anesthesia, which was really very mild, really messed with my mind.

Cochlear implants evolving

The Washington Post had an interesting article on cochlear implants - "One Implant Made an Impact. Might Two Do Even More? For Family, Second Cochlear Surgery Was a Difficult Decision," By Anne Dooley, Special to The Washington Post, Tuesday, January 6, 2009; Page HE05. The article discussed how the use of the implants and the number used is changing (from one to two for various reasons) after the requisite fights with insurance companies.

If anyone has one of these to donate to the museum, even non-working, please let us know.

More medical technology - robot-assisted surgery

Here's an interesting bit about robot surgery - which saves wear-and-tear on both the surgeon and the patient when everything goes right. In the Museum, we have a Satava collection devoted to collecting the groundbreaking medical technology mentioned in the article, and on display we have Penelope, a early attempt at a robot nurse.
Prepping Robots to Perform Surgery
By BARNABY J. FEDER
New York Times May 4, 2008
From knees to the heart, more operations are being performed by robots, under the guidance of surgeons.

And speaking of telemedicine...

...today's Washington Times had a piece on teleradiology - "Outsourcing images," by Shelley Widhalm (March 20, 2008) that talks about some of the issues, ethical and practical, involved in the practice. It's a bit of a puff piece for an area business, but gets across the points one should think about.

My earlier post on telemedicine is here.

Telemedicine at its most basic

Telemedicine is one of those buzzwords these days, and if you've checked into a hospital for x-rays after say 7 pm, you may very well have participated in it. Radiology is all digital these days - no film anymore - and India with its quotient of well-trained doctors is wide awake at midnight on the US East coast.

But here's another, more personal example from the Washington Times. In The doctor's online 'office' from March 18, 2008 by Karen Goldberg Goff, you can read about Dr. Howard Stark's embrace of the Internet to make life and medicine easier for everyone involved. Up to and including, "I once had a patient who worked for the WorldBank who called me from the airport in Kazakhstan," he says. "He had an abdominal hernia and was
in tremendous pain. I talked him through pushing in his own hernia on the floor of the airport."

Now that's telemedicine.