Healthcare is at the center of the Washington universe this month. It is also a key component of the tech industry and the fastest-growing sector of the global economy.
Each month TecTrends Reporters survey developments across the tech industry, and this month I thumb through the TecTrend Reporter on healthcare.
The articles summarized in this issue range from current clinical developments to legal and regulatory issues and the growing crossover of the healthcare and computer sectors.
- Scientific American looks at the H1N1 flu, commonly called ’swine flu,’ and the gap it has revealed in our ability to track disease patterns among livestock.
- Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology reports that the pharma industry is now betting heavily on RNA interference (RNAi) technology to offer subtler, more precisely targeted drugs. A snag: Delivering these drugs to their targets has proven challenging.
Washington’s political fights do not figure heavily in these articles – anyone who wants a dose of healthcare politics will have to go elsewhere. (Don’t worry, politics is easy to find on the Web.)
But some articles here do touch on the real world issues and concerns that have thrust healthcare into the political arena.
- In Technology Review, Andy Kessler has tough words for the healthcare industry on the subject of digitizing health records. The industry has been in no rush to digitize, he argues, because the current chaotic system helps to ‘keep medicine’s lucrative business model hidden.’
- Villains are harder to find in Clinical Laboratory News, which looks at the debate in laboratories over testing for deficiency in prohormone Vitamin D. But there is also a back story here involving research findings, the mass media, and the public.
Meanwhile the tech industry is looking for a piece of the healthcare sector.
- Also from Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Microsoft’s health solutions group has grown from four to 400 members. This year Microsoft released its Amalga Life Sciences 2009 solution package for life sciences research information.
- From Health Management Technology, software as a service (SaaS) is finding a home in the healthcare sector, with NYU’s Langone Medical Center choosing an SaaS system called ePREMIS to straighten out a muddle of legacy administrative and accounting systems.
These are only a handful of the 33 articles conveniently summarized in this month’s TecTrends Reporter on Healthcare. Read the whole Reporter to give you a big picture view of the whirlwhind of activity taking place across the healthcare technology spectrum.
Tags: Healthcare, TecTrends Reporter
Health care is huge due to the costs, and the potential profits, and what (or what kind), of reform is passed in Congress will determine how much and just plain how, providers will gain profits from the health care industry in the near future. So, everyone is scrambling to stake out a position now, betting that their strategy will be a winner. Change can be good, but it is always frot with danger.
Yes, and we seem on the cusp of a major change. The politics is outside the scope of this blog, but at this point it seems likely that there will be a bill, and it will shake up the landscape of the U.S. healthcare system.
A small offtopic comment on this, Im using the google chrome webbrowser, but it looks like your blog is not displaying correctly… Just to let you know. Regards.
Thanks for the tip! It looks fine in Firebox, but I’ll have to check it out in Chrome.
This is the second time I have visited your TecTrends Reporter on Healthcare: Watching the Vital Signs « TecTrends Monitor blog and found an interesting article perfectly matching what I was searching for so I decided to add your feed to my RSS Reader. Thanks for all your hard work.