more technology & healthcare costs

Just recently, I saw a commerical that demonstrated another indirect method in which technology decreases healthcare costs. The commercial was advertising one of those fitness routines anyone can do in his/her home. In addition, he/she can do many different exercises with just one innovative machine. Although this method initially costs money and has financial benefits for that company, it increases a person's fitness level and improves his/her health, reducing the potential cost of hospital bills for a heart attack or other illness due to poor exercise or obesity.
Although this is not probable right now, another futuristic way that technology helps with reducing healthcare costs is that if researchers perfected the "personalized healthcare" system from the Grand Challenges for Engineering where physicians would be able to know the specific diseases a person could contract based on his/her blood or genome. This method would eliminate the costs of many unnecessary tests and improve healthcare overall.

Grand Challenges for Engineering. (2009). National Academy of Engineering of the National Academics. https://courseweb.library.upenn.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_23684_1%26url%3d

technology and healthcare cont.

Automated contact centers at hospitals and insurance companies also help reduce our healthcare costs. [1] Interestingly, I found this information from another blog known as the Communications and Technology Blog, which might make this claim a bit biased towards whatever company the blogger works for. However, his reason – automated answering systems reduces the costs of employing workers for simple questions such as office hours – seems legitimate. A more general way that technology decreases healthcare costs is that as more over-the-counter drugs become available in more places (CVS, Wal-Mart), people don’t have to travel as far to obtain the drugs, reducing the traveling costs. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the electronic system reduces the costs of paperwork. This, in turn, also decreases the costs of hiring a number of employees needed to enter this paperwork information into databases each time. Metavante, a financial technology service company, claims that for one medical practice, only 4 staffs are needed instead of 12 to work on information from insurance payers.[2] This claim obviously has a vested financial interest because it wants people to join its company. Nevertheless, the digital world does reduce the number of employees needed to manage a medical practice.

[1] Tehrani, Rich. Nortel: Unified Communications Reduces Healthcare Costs. (2009). http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/nortel/nortel-unified-communications-reduces-healthcare-costs.html

[2] Metavante. Technology Reduces Healthcare Costs, Drives Efficiencies for Providers. (2009). http://www.metavante.com/cmspub/groups/public/documents/document/mvp0_014945.pdf

how can technology reduce healthcare costs

Technology helps us every day in improving our healthcare system and reducing the cost of it as well. One example could be that as more technological advances occur, more commonly used medicine such as insulin for diabetics becomes cheaper simply because mass production becomes easier due to technology. Similarly, new medical equipments are facilitating with diagnosing patients faster, eliminating the costs for extra tests. Now, because most patient identification information and many other healthcare records are stored in a database, the information can be easily changed and accessed, reducing the amount of paperwork in healthcare costs. In addition, since most medical related information can be found on the internet, it is easier for patients to self-diagnose themselves rather than going to a physician. For example, instead of paying a $25 co-pay to see a doctor, the person could just ask a doctor online for free by posting his/her symptoms. Today, while going to the Penn Nanotech Society meeting, I learned a more indirect way that technology reduces healthcare costs. Silver nano uses nanotechnology to instill silver nanoparticles in water pipes and medical equipments as an antimicrobial device. This method reduces the risk of people contracting bacterial infections, thus indirectly reducing their potential healthcare costs. This last claim is a bit skeptical simply because the companies producing this technology have financial benefits.

Kage, Ben. EPA uses nanotech regulation ploy to target colloidal silver while ignoring all other nanotech particles. NaturalNews.com. (2006). http://www.naturalnews.com/021231.html

swine flu cont. - transformation into engineer

I'm not exactly sure what I'm suppose to be blogging about for this entry as tranformation into an engineer, so I guess I'll just discuss how I found most of my sources. There were a lot of random sites on the internet about swine flu, so it was difficult at first to find a legitimate article unless it was the CDC website. In addition, almost all the published news articles on swine flu were biased. Some were trying to create a mass media hype about it while others tried to persuade the audience that the swine flu wasn't that different from the regular flu. Most of my information on the vaccine came from the New England Journal of Medicine, which published a few clinical trial studies. Other medical journal sites such as Pubmed also had a few articles on the swine flu vaccine. I based my decisions on who should receive the shot first and whether I should get the vaccine shot on not mostly on the results of the clinical trials, which didn't seem that promising to me seeing that nearly half had uncomfortable side effects.

swine flu

Personally, I would definitely not get the swine flu vaccine right now. It really is not that different from the regular seasonal flu; this flu just seems a lot more severe due to vast media coverage. According to the CDC, there's a low mortality rate for the swine flu, and only people who are pregnant or have other chronic illnesses are at an increased risk of complications from the flu. In addition, the New England Journal of Medicine just published several studies from the clinical trials of experimental swine flu vaccine that said almost half of the people who were given the vaccine had some form of side effects while others didn't really respond to the vaccine. After reading all this and discussing it in my recitation groups, I'm a little skeptical on this vaccine. When my recitation class voted on whether he/she should get the shot, the majority of the people said no and I agree.
As for who should get the shot first, we, as a class, decided that the most logical yet risky way is by giving it to people most likely to spread it. It's the most reasonable one in that this method benefits the society as a whole more and can protect as many people as possible. For example, we can give it to the caregivers, the children, and people living in dense population areas. However, this plan is rather risky becuase it's an indirect form to protect people from getting swine flu. For example, when giving it to people most at risk (direct method), the media can say that an X number of people was saved today by the swine flu vaccine. In contrast, the media can't say how many people will actually be saved from the swine flu using the indirect method becuase there's no way to know. Also, if the vaccine didn't work or if the flu virus mutates, then there could be a mass epidemic, and the plan would fail.
I'm not exactly sure what biomedical technologies would help with the swine flu pandemic. But if there was a way to biologically tag the virus to know what it mutates to when it does, then perhaps the vaccine that's made would be more efficient. Also, since the virus spreads through contact with other people, sneezing or coughing, maybe scientists could develop a method to keep the air in a really populated building such as school difficult for the virus to survive so the flu won't be as easily transmitted. For example, a technology known as AiroCide developed by Nasa has helped prevent transmission of infections in hospitals. I guess more general technologies for managing the swine flu at Penn are maybe installing more hand sanitizers in classrooms/labs and buildings. Another way could be to install heat sensors at building entrances so that if a student was really sick, then the sensor could detect his/her body temperature and inform the student health service.

BE100 Blog

1. I originally picked bioengineering because like probably half of my peers, I wanted to do pre-med. A biology or chemistry major didn't really appeal to me because if I didn't get into medical school, I would most likely enroll in graduate school and I'm not sure that's what I want to do. After doing an internship this past year at the hospital though, I became really interested in how people design synthetic biomaterials, new drugs, and artificial tissues....
2. I'm not exactly sure what bioengineers do. Before, I always imagined that bioengineers develop new materials and process for curing diseases and making better prosthetics. After hearing some Penn graduates talk, I know some people go into consulting, others do research for pharmaceutical companies, and others become professors.
3. For my senior year in high school, I did a mentorship in the endocrinology department at a hospital in Va. My mentor does numerous research in diabetes, insulin, and metformin. Likewise, I really loved the subject as well. Thus if I had a chance to go back in history to work on some biomedical technology, I would like to have been around Banting and Best isolated insulin, and later in history when other scientists perfected other drugs like Lantus and Humalog.
4. I want to learn as much as I can about everything in bioengineering, especially how prosthetic hearts, valves and other materials are made, which will definitely take a lot longer than 4 years.
5. For now, I really want to learn how researchers develop the right kind of drugs for a particular diseases. For example, how do they program the cure or medicine to target a specific organ part or various cells. In addition, I really want to learn how the body builds resistance against a drug and how researchers can solve that problem other than increasing the dosage or just giving another medicine.
6. Hospitals have dialysis for kidney failures, but what about livers? http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/vt-ett091409.php This article talkes about Va Tech researchers trying to create tissues that will mimic the liver. Though liver transplants are available, they are extremely dangerous and pose high risk of rejection by the recipient. These group of researchers will try to assemble a 3D model that can mimic liver cells in vitro. I think it's really great how modern technology is able to help researchers create more and more methods to cure diseases. Maybe if I can, I would like to do research in this area later as well.
7. I'm interested in genetic engineering as well, especially the clinical aspect of it. For example, I want to learn how researchers are trying to alter a part of a person's DNA to make them less susceptible to a disease and in general, just more about genes and DNA.