While the answer will become obvious as you read along, thefact that we are even asking this question validates why healthcare is laggingbehind in technology compared to other industries. How come the oil drillingindustries have technology that allows drills to auto navigate to find oil sources and positions a deep sea oil rig within a few feet of accuracy? Theanswer is applied engineering. Other industries apply right technology for aspecific problem. But in healthcare, we are catching up on “storing” and“printing” patient records. EMRs should be the lowest common denominator.With that said, Technology Executives have a duty to think about applied engineering in healthcare.
There was a breakthrough in egg stem cell research mightallow stem cells in ovarian tissues to form new eggs. What’s in this for an ITexecutive? The company that did this was sold to GlaxoSmith Kline for $720Million which begs the question, “how will this disrupt healthcare?”
There are ultra efficient solar power generators that couldessentially transform your windows into powerhouses. Light-Field Photographyhas the potential to change “imaging” in healthcare. Healthcare imaging isbased on traditional “image” transfer models, think about how much this willchange when you are able to pick layers within the picture and get it intofocus? There are 3D transistors that arebeing built to make smaller and more powerful mobile devices. There arehigh-speed materials that are being discovered for new battery materials thatwill revolutionize “energy storage”
There is a technology called Nanopore sequencing that allowsreading long DNA strands electronically allowing the possibility of genomesequencing a routine medical procedure.
Coming to the original question, Faster Fourier Transform,though an abstract theory will enable advanced multimedia devices and betterdata processing.
All these technologies will play a major role (indirectly,in most cases) in healthcare and as leaders we need to be ready to anticipatethis adapt to the impact.
The common thread that links all these technologies listedabove is that they have all been in the Technology Review published by MIT asthe top 10 Emerging Technologies.
The problem is executives who fashion themselves technologists because they can toss a couple of buzzwords around. Sound familiar? It requires more than interaction with sales people and calling your strategy "best-of-breed." One must have an understanding of the business and the data that are used to represent the state of that business. Doesn't matter if it's finance, health care, shipping, manufacturing or any other endeavor. Once you understand the data elements, entities, and their relationships, it becomes an academic exercise in determining how to manage storage, transport, security, and presentation. That's when you select the appropriate technologies. Real technologists understand the need first, then find the appropriate technical solution(s). Unenlightened and untrained executives do it the other way around.
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