High-tech Innovations Needed To Help Prevent Economic Crisis In Health Care And Improve Quality

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Also Included In: Public Health;  Medical Devices / Diagnostics;  Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 26 Aug 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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The United States should develop a comprehensive strategy on the growing need for technological innovations to help prevent the impending economic crisis in health care and to improve the quality and convenience of care, according to a report from the 2007 conference "Economic Strategy for Health Care through Standards and Technologies."

By shifting to a more proactive approach for disease prevention and more efficient, quality-centric care, new measurement technologies at the molecular level will be required. "A shift of such magnitude can only happen by developing and implementing breakthrough biomeasurement, bioinformatics, biologically based and health information technologies that can be integrated with current efforts to improve health care delivery," the report said.

According to the report, new measurement and in vitro visualization technologies will generate huge amounts of data, requiring advanced computational analysis to identify significant pieces of information.

"Before these technologies can be realized and commercialized, however, a long-term economic health care strategy must be established, with clear metrics for measuring and determining the value of emerging bio and information technologies," the report said. "Creating this strategy will facilitate proper allocation of financial resources and ensure a focus on implementing the most promising technologies."

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Organized by the Biotechnology Council, which includes the IEEE, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the conference was held at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on 25 September 2007. Speakers included leaders in medicine, health care, government and industry.

Click here to access the report.

IEEE-USA advances the public good and promotes the careers and public policy interests of more than 215,000 engineers, scientists and allied professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. IEEE-USA is part of the IEEE, the world's largest technical professional society with 375,000 members in 160 countries. Seehttp://www.ieeeusa.org/.

Source: Chris McManes
IEEE-USA

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