High-tech innovations needed to help prevent economic crisis in health care and improve quality

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."

Source: IEEE-USA