Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
We May Be Moving Toward A Future Where Visits To The Doctor's Office Are Unnecessary
Technological advancements are ushering in a new era of health care, eroding the long-held model of hospitals and doctors鈥 offices as the physical center of the health system...聽This rapidly changing landscape raises the question: Will there come a day when we won鈥檛 need to go to the doctor鈥檚 office anymore? (Ho, 6/12)
The health care industrial complex has spent billions of dollars and untold amounts of time trying to make medical records as flexible, invisible and unobtrusive as possible for patients and clinicians alike...聽But after nearly two decades of concerted innovation, amid a push to do away with paper records, many physicians say they鈥檙e still hamstrung by issues that have dogged them for years. (Francassa, 6/12)
Some experts say ingestibles 鈥 also dubbed 鈥渟mart pills鈥 鈥 can help solve one of the biggest problems plaguing the health care industry: patients simply not taking their medication as prescribed. The Proteus sensor can indicate if and when a pill is taken. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 鈥 the first such device to receive the agency鈥檚 OK. (Thadani, 6/12)
Inside Starkey鈥檚 Shattuck Avenue lab, Carlile and his team are researching brain-sensing technologies that may enhance hearing aids in the next five or six years...聽Using a skullcap dotted by round electrodes, the researchers are measuring brain-wave activity to pinpoint which talker a person is trying to hear in noisy situations. (Evangelista, 6/12)
Newer models of聽medical devices like pacemakers, insulin pumps and medication pumps聽have wireless connectivity so doctors can remotely聽access the device to聽monitor the patient or to make changes to how it operates. But those very features聽also provide a backdoor聽for hackers聽to gain access to the device, just as they could hack into any other information stored online. (Stanford, 6/12)