Technology Innovation and Global Health 2: Infocomm and Medical Devices

I definitely believe in Telemedicine. I think it would be great to be able to email or message my doctor in the privacy of wherever I may be and whenever I want to. I do agree with how Singapore runs telemedicine in that, teleconsultations are only available to those that have already had a face to face physical examination by the doctor and the doctor is clear with the patients condition.

I am extremely interested in the Non-Occlusive BP Monitoring watch. I know it would be helpful to my mother. I also think Thermography is interesting and certainly have tried to convince my cousin to try it out.

Technologies seem to amaze me time and time again. The cost-effectiveness analysis of these new biotechnologies need to be widespread and broad instead of narrow and segmented.

I am a big fan of Health Information Technology. We had computerized health records in Boston when I worked at Boston Medical Center. I can't begin to say how convenient it was. Anytime you logged into the patients charts a big flashing warning will pop up showing the medications the patients were allergic to. This computerized health records system was shared over affiliated hospitals around Boston which made moving around and seeing numerous doctors in various places easy and fast (no need to request records to be sent).

I find it interesting that the HIT Leadership Panel consisted of business leaders. In Japan, it is the big car companies that purchase health insurance for their workers under the companies own "insurance company". It is interesting to see that the HIT Leadership Panel is capitalizing on this idea by inviting CEOs from FedEx, Target, GM, Pepsico, Wells Fargo, International Paper, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson Controls, and WalMart.

I am from Taiwan and I have seen the various problems with the Smart Cards happening in person. I do agree that I have frequently heard more complaints from hospitals rather than praise. I feel that the Smart Cards will be a great supplement and can facilitate the transfer of our current paper system to the Health Information Technology, linked computerized health records.

I do feel that this is a better system than the magnetic strip because as we all know magnetic strips can end up losing its ability to be read. Yes it will cost lots of resources to adopt this system and the funding for this adoption could be difficult to find, but I think in the long run this is a better system. Because I am from Taiwan, I would feel comfortable carrying around a card with all my personal information on it. I believe the only way to prevent misuse would be to make the Smart Cards password protected like ATM cards and a PIN would have to be pushed on the reader for the hospitals to access the information. This would prevent information to be misused if the card was lost or stolen.