Technology and Health Care March 29, 2007
Posted by mgonzalez02 in Themes.trackback
How will the merging of technology and health care affect our lives in 2015?
Society and Technology 2015
How will the merging of technology and health care affect our lives in 2015?
I would suggest that folks take a look at the Open Source blog (by clicking on the link under Blogroll on Open Source on the lower right of your screen). There was a great show held last night, Monday April 9th entitled Grey Anatomy: Putting the Brain Under Oath (38)
Monday, April 09.
Here is the opening of the blog:
Today, thanks to advances in neuroscience, both prosecutors and defense attorneys have new tools at their disposal: brain scans. CT, PET, and MRI scans have long been able to reveal structural abnormalities in the brain, such as tumors or other lesions that might impair the way we behave. And for years defense attorneys have been arguing that anatomic anomalies may produce changes that render us unable to stop ourselves from shooting our parents, or robbing the conrner store. “Your honor, my tumor made me do it,” could be on the way to becoming a familiar phrase to court stenographers in years to come.
Chris and his guests explored the intersection of advances in cognitive science and the legal system. Chris often asked the question during the show: “When will the information we obtain from mapping of the brain be admissable in court — the way DNA is today?”
I especially liked the comments of Professor John De Gabrieli of Harvard and MIT (see blog link for exact credentials) when he said that he thinks it is important to have these discussions about the legal and moral implications of these discoveries we will be making in cognitive sciences. Without the discussion occurring there may be knee jerk reactions from society and policy (like we have seen with stem cell research).
We need to have a real public discourse on health information – who owns it, who maintains it, how it is used, and how it is shared.
Consumers are just discovering today the implications of the consolidation of credit and financial services information into shared databases. Your ‘financial health’ can now be extensively cross-referenced, and credit card companies are now considering looking at any delinquency – mortgage, parking ticket, taxes – as a late payment that allows them to change rates and terms.
The same data sharing infrastructure is now emerging in health, driven by the health industry, rather than the consumer. Health Information Exchanges, eprescriptions and electronic medical records are increasingly being used to unify patient medical information about diagnosis, treatment, drugs, and health condition. RI is one of the leaders in the early adoption of these technologies.
Yet no serious and informed public discussion has ensued about who owns this information – the patient, the insurer, the health provider, the employer? Unlike credit, these are purchased services, but ownership is made more complicated because insurance is a third-party-payor model. Consumers don’t directly pay for their health care.
These technologies have the potential to revolutionize our decisions about our own health, increase the amount of customized decision making available to us, and decrease the pain of navigating the health care system. They also have the possibility of radically resegmenting insurance company’s approach to risk and coverage decisions. They hold a wealth of information for pharmaceutical marketing. And they tell the story as to whether a potential employee will be a ticking timebomb for the group healthcare premium.
Excellent points, Alan … and finding the answers to these questions will become increasingly critical as we continue to mine the human genome. Understanding the genetic roots of disease will present a double-edge sword: a whole new universe of personalized medicine will emerge; and individuals and families will have extraordinary insight into life expectancy, what to expect in terms of quality of life, etc … but this new body of knowledge will instantly up the ante in terms of the issues you raise.
Another issue that is emerging at the intersection of higher education and health care is planning for the expected pandemic flu. Campuses around the nation are engaged in extensive efforts to think about how they might cope with the potential impact of a major disease pandemic.
Unfortunately, many are simply trying to figure out how to shift from place-based learning to online learning for the duration, and focusing on how to move all the courses of the institution to their course management systems so classes can be continued ‘as usual’ during the pandemic. Why is this an unfortunate response?
The question is the focus on learning – is it on the course or the student? Such planning exercises suggest a successful adaptation to such a crisis is to get the classes up online so students can take them as usual. But shouldn’t the focus be on the student not the course? isn’t his an opportunity to allow and support the student to take control of their own learning, to document it, using for example emerging e-Portfolio tools, and the present it back to the accrediting bodies (the institutions themselves, presumably) for assessment? In the mean time, the different challenges students, nie people will be facing in a pandemic are likely to revise significantly the perceptions of what is important, and alter the opportunities for learning.
Phil
As a follow up see the the blog comment from colleagues a Washington State University:
http://www.nilspeterson.com/2007/04/18/pandemic-flu-and-the-web-20-university
regards,
Phil