Even More Ideas

As I was thinking of ways that technology could be used to decrease the cost of health care, the issue of avoidance and prevention. It’s much easier to teach people to have a healthy lifestyle than to treat the problems that are created from a lifetime of bad habits. Quick distribution and knowledge of how to be safe and healthy can indirectly reduce the cost of health care by significant amounts. Technology could be used to distribute information such as preventative care and healthy lifestyles in effective ways to as many people as possible in an attractive format, particularly to kids. Even primitive formats such as brochures and booklets encourage a healthy lifestyle. Obviously, however, you cannot prevent every disease and illness with preventative care, but it is also important to have quick treatment. Reactive treatment is much more effective when it is applied quickly; no one ever tells you to hold on going to the doctor for a few days if you have meningitis or break a leg. Improving medical response technology is key to reducing health care costs. Ambulances, while they provide an excellent medium to keep a patient stable while they travel to the hospital, are often too little, too late. Ideally, a patient should be able to receive care almost immediately. Emergency calls should be quick, efficient, and there should be other available options to receive medical care, such as “emergency buttons” that can be installed in public areas or in an easily accessible location, such as an apartment lobby. It is impossible to estimate how many people get late or even no responsive care in an emergency but to reduce this number is to reduce the cost of health care by ensuring that problems are responded to as quickly as possible. Another way that technology could be used in a similar manner is remote monitoring equipment. Implanted equipment on a patient could monitor vital signs or important organic or artificial processes (such as blood pressure or a pacemaker) and alert both the patient and emergency care when something goes wrong. This could significantly reduce the cost of individual health care by making sure the individual is informed of problems and gets treatment as soon as possible before it exacerbates.