The coming medical revolution. We need HYPERINNOVATION to fix Health Care Crisis

Via Scoop.it – Creating the Future

Technology has the potential to transform our concept of sickness.   There’s nothing in the 2,000-plus page [Healthcare] bill that gets into this kind of hyper innovative individual medicine, biosensor leveraging, genome and all these sorts of things – it doesn’t really show up.   But it is a great opportunity to make medicine and healthcare more affordable. For example, it’s estimated that about a third of the $350 billion spent a year on prescriptions is a total waste. So there’s a great opportunity there, with gene-specific drugs.   If we do the 20 million echocardiograms, and almost as many abdominal and fetal ultrasounds, for free with ultrasound pocket devices, there are billions of dollar we could save there.   With sensors, if we could get tens of millions of people in this country to manage or prevent their diabetes that could have enormous financial implications.   And it’s the same for high blood pressure: 50 percent of people with high blood pressure do not have it adequately managed, so they’re vulnerable for strokes and heart attacks.   If we can manage it with a simple cellphone sensor, that would be an enormous potential to lower costs for stroke disabilities, heart attack, heart failure, all those sorts of things.
Via www.salon.com