New Emerging Technologies in Health Care

Introduction

Innovation is a factor which is likely to be the driving force behind healthcare information technology (HIT) in the next 30 years. In addition, renewable energy constructs will help reduce the administration costs associated with healthcare (National Intelligence Council, 2000). Innovation is a concept seen mostly as it relates to growing a business. It is reasonable to think it will become an increasingly integral component to the success of healthcare information technology. Innovation is an idea or behavior new to an industry, company of organization. Further, successful innovation is multidimensional; it increasingly involves people at different levels within a company, players across industries and from outside the innovation initiator (the company who first births an idea, concept or product) (Daft, 2010). Innovation has had great success when used in an open system (Daft, 2010) and will help fuel technological advances well into the future. Due to the increasingly regulated environment, consumer knowledge and access to care, the country needs mechanisms (technology) that not only help people live healthier, but bridge the gap between access and non access and constantly empower patients to take a greater role in their care as the nation moves more towards a patient centered approach to medicine (primary care) (Shi and Singh, 2008).

Discussion

Biotechnology is an ever emerging field for great societal change and will have a tremendous impact on the future of HIT National Intelligence Council, 2000). Given the increased need for more efficient technology to reduce healthcare costs, advances in technology fueled by innovation (which will bring many players to the drawing board for research, input and data collection) will help propel the biotechnology field to new levels of success and discovery. For example, researchers at Cytos (a Swiss biotechnology company) currently have a vaccine for use controlling hypertension underway.

Information from scientists, patients, pharmacologists, physicians and others lead to the development of the vaccine which is currently undergoing Phase II trials (Sivaramakrishan, 2011).

The pros of this type of storage device is that it is portable, can hold up to 2 gigabytes of information, files can be saved, modified or deleted like necessary, prices are relatively low. The con of the USB flash drive is minimal, and the main con is that it is so small, and can be easily misplaced or lost.

In addition to biotechnology treatments, the rise in gene therapies, a close relative of biotechnology will likely increase the early diagnosis of disease, reduce the need for expensive testing, shorten therapy time and pharmacological costs to name a few (Kalish and Thompson). As more technology is created to predict and diagnose an illness at the onset, (or before) the American healthcare system should see a decrease in total overall costs. Currently healthcare expenses have been estimated at over 75% of national expenditures (Kimbuende, 2010).

Improvements in both quality and efficiency will also drive health information technology in the future. Quality improvements and efficient service delivery are being demanded by a sophisticated consumer base (Shi and Singh, 2008). As technology continues ...