How the current healthcare and biomedical sciences field constitute important roles in our lives yet most of the healthcare provided is inadequate (in terms of cost, efficiency, etc.) due to ineffective systems that humans have put in place to manage healthcare or the biomedical sciences field.
Interesting Observations and Ideas:
I enjoyed this video very much! It brought up many creative uses of technology to improve on medical technologies and allowing people to gain better health more efficiently.
Though initially it felt that the ideas were very abstract, it came to mind that most revolutionary technologies seem far-fetched before such ideas are implemented and developed into real products for use. However, moving on from the ideas proposed by the video, there may be further improvements on these technologies – the possibility of these technologies to be operated without human control.
Say for instance, instead of touching the touchscreens on the devices to start a medical checkup or scan, the devices may be engineered such that it does the scans automatically without human inputs to order it to do so. This idea is extracted from the idea of devices communicating with each other from session 5, but in this scenario, the device may “communicate” with the human’s condition directly.
This may benefit especially patients with dementia to take their medicine regularly and remind them about their checkup timings. This may also aid check on the condition of a patient regularly without the patient or doctor stepping in physically. For example, checking for breathing difficulties in intervals if the patient has a record of asthma.
Key take-away points:
1. We may find ways to reward people to stay healthy
In class, Prof mentioned how the money in Singapore’s Medisave account is kept aside unlike insurance where the money that is not used will be forfeited. Furthermore, the remainder in a deceased person’s Medisave account may be passed down to family members via wills.
This is in a way, a method to encourage people to stay healthy because the money can be accumulated when they are healthy. To bring this a step further, the Singapore government may wish to reward citizens for staying healthy so more people will be conscious about their health.
For example, the government may allow Singaporeans to take out a higher percentage amount of their CPF by a certain age if they are deemed healthy then, since part of CPF is aimed at paying off medical bills. However, there should still be a limit to this higher percentage to be prepared for rainy days.
2. There is no right or wrong to patents
I used to think patents are bad because I saw things from the developing countries’ point of view, where substantial benefits may be brought to the poor but have been blocked off to them due to patents. For example, the seeds that produce more yields are patented, causing farmers in developing countries to be mired in poverty even with technological advancements that are supposed to help them.
However, the Prof mentioned that the word patent actually means ‘Opening’ – showing the new technology to the world while the companies get monopoly rights for a period of time. This encourages companies to do R&D.
Hence, alike reading 5, to reap the most benefits from technological advancements, governments or companies have to strike a balance between patents and cost of the products.
Issues for further discussion:
It was disappointing that there are systems like that of the US healthcare that compromises on the benefits that can be obtained from healthcare services due to various reasons. The many solutions discussed to revamp and improve on such healthcare or biomedical sectors are feasible and one can look forward to these improvements in the near future.
However, there are many healthcare systems like the French one that Prof mentioned and I was quite interested in how they could be so successful. We could have talked more about how some systems can be very successful if time permitted.
Personal Ratings for Session:
8.5/10 – The session was informative and covered all aspects for discussion. The facts and figures provided also made us think across time (how sectors changed or evolved with time) and across space (how the sectors constituted different proportions of the society). However, I felt that it would be interesting if we could discuss more types of healthcare into details (if we had the time).
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