Carroll County Times Articles
Technology Usage in Modern Medicine
by Robert Wack – August 14, 2005
Technology and modern medicine are deeply intertwined. From the monitors that track your vital signs, to the imaging used to see inside your body, to the testing done in the laboratory, technology has vastly improved, but also complicated, the delivery of medical care.
Cost of Technology
Increasing health care costs are due in part to technology. Initially, new medical technologies are usually scarce and expensive. With improvements, manufacturing costs drop, and the use of the technology spreads. At the same time, physicians increase understanding of the technology, using it more frequently. The initially expensive but rarely used technology becomes cheaper and more frequently used. This increase in utilization then raises overall health care costs, but the quality of care also improves.
CT scans are a good example. When first introduced, a single scan cost thousands of dollars, and not all hospitals had a scanner. As the technology rapidly improved, the cost dropped significantly. A CT scan now costs only hundreds of dollars, and they are widely used to diagnose internal injuries all over the body.
Monitoring is another good example. From the time Luigi Galvani discovered in 1737 that living tissue generates electrical current to today, technology has allowed ever more detailed surveillance of the inner workings of our bodies. Initially crude instruments were used to detect the mere presence of electrical activity. As technology improved, instruments were developed that could isolate the electrical activity in muscles, nerves, the heart, and the brain, and the science of electrophysiology developed. We can now measure tiny changes in the activity of any part of the body using sophisticated and very sensitive equipment that allows the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases that were unknown hundreds of years ago, because the technology didn't exist.
As the cost of electronics decreased, monitors were used more widely. The more they were used, the more uses were found for them, and new insights into the human body were discovered. For example, as the technology for infant monitoring improved, more infants were placed on monitors, and the phenomenon of apnea and bradycardia of prematurity was discovered. This is when the immaturity of the premature infant's nervous system causes occasional slowing of the heart rate and breathing which, if severe enough, can obviously cause problems. Then more healthy term infants were placed on monitors, and it was discovered that even some term infants have considerable variability in their heart rates and breathing, forcing physicians to reevaluate what we believe to be normal behavior in healthy infants. As we continue to improve these technologies and gather more information on both sick and healthy infants, those ideas may change yet again.
About the Author
Robert Wack M.D. is Director of Hospital Pediatrics at Carroll Hospital Center and an Advisor for the Carroll Technology Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating businesses, government and residents about technology issues. Questions are welcomed and may be addressed in future articles. Email Robert at rwack@adelphia.net or go to www.carrolltechcouncil.org for a list of other Advisor categories.
