Health Care Technology and Disparities 

What is the role of health technology in the cost of health care?

As stated on page 117 of our textbook “Technological innovations have been the single most important factor in medical cost inflation(Institute of Medicine, 2002)”. From what I have gathered the reason we see this inflation within our health care cost in regards to technological innovations is that there is a demand for advances and designs in new medical technology that is created much by how political clout and other entities influence our cultural and societal norms and expectations.

A whole lot of money goes into the research for these innovations, some of which have a path of continual costs from implementation, the possible space needed for the equipment, training and hiring specialists to operate, and cost to maintain and/or upgrade. With IT tech the problem is the cost is part of the barrier to implementation but the hope is after the initial hurdle it may be able to reduce several cost factors and this would be one of the ways it can help close the gap in health disparities.

What are some potential or realized benefits of health technology?

Health technology is defined by WHO as “the application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of life”. Realized benefits are extensive, we see it in how vaccines and the global immunization campaign has allowed us to declare smallpox eradicated, with the use of medicine to control health issues like asthma and diabetes, procedures and devices have aided in the detection and correction of health issues thus improving and extending… well I can not even begin to estimate how many peoples lives.

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As we are in a digital age, our medical technology is growing with it and I am hoping that we can execute health IT into our healthcare system so that we can receive the potential benefits of helping to close the health care disparities gap, lower costs, reduce: time, paperwork, medical errors, medication complications, and unnecessary/duplicate tests being done, allow information to be shared rapidly and provide better followup and follow-through, enhance the quality of studies to better understand and help the health and well being of all and so on.

Health technology is big business in the US, more so than in other countries.  In a few sentences, why do you think that is?

As part of my answer to question 1, I feel health technology is bigger in the U.S. due to the demand for advances and designs in new medical technology that is created much by how political clout and other entities influence our cultural and societal norms and expectations. This is of course is not the sole reason, there are other factors like it appears that other countries may feel a diminished need to initiate and invest in creating new technology given they can “get a free ride on U.S. biomedical R&D”(PG. 119 of the textbook) and implement it in a less costly and efficient manner. Another reason seems to be the structure and focus of health care systems, in many other competitive countries to the U.S., a social healthcare system has been in use and may have been so for decades and this system may focus on primary care and limit the investment into the newer technologies, the downside to this being for them is there is likely to be a waiting list for use of technology like MRIs.