Phone applications are playing an important role in the delivery of healthcare and also in education of medical professionals. The market for these apps has been increasingly more popular over the past few years. According to a group of researchers called Reaserch2Guidance, these medical apps are amounting to almost $715 million a year. The applications are designed to be used for healthcare professionals, public education, or as health diaries. This useful advancement has helped to improve the medical field, but it has also been very costly. Medical technology is beneficial if improvements in the medical field exceed the costs.
As a whole, medical spending is worth the increased price. When benefit and cost are weighed together, advances in technology have proved to be of worth. David Cutler, a member of American Progress, states: It is widely accepted that technological change has accounted for the bulk of medical care cost increases over time. But it does not necessarily follow that technological change is therefore bad. Presumably, technological change brings benefits in addition to costs-increased longevity, improved quality of life, less time absent from work, and so on.
As medical spending has grown, health has improved. Mark McClellan, the Director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform states, “An infant born in 1990 had a life expectancy that was seven years greater than an infant born in 1950, and a lower lifetime disability as well. ” This demonstrates how far the medical field has come in the last decade. New technologies substitute for older technologies most of the time. Not only are there issues of replacing old technology with new innovations, but the prices are rising rapidly in today’s economy.
Recognizing that medical care includes many benefits will help to validate that as a whole, medical spending is well worth its cost. The impact medical technology has had on health care spending has been an interesting subject for a while, but as we move into the 21st century, historical trends may not remain quite the same. Now we need to evaluate the factors that may be able to modify this impact in the future. Even though healthcare is becoming increasingly more expensive, it is certainly worth it considering the way it has evolved in recent years.
Improved medical care can result in increased longevity and possibly even quality of life. Healthcare as a whole is clearly worth the cost increase. Even though the costs of medical advancements are quite high, it is a valuable field to spend time on. In the economic recession that the United States has been experiencing in the past few years has led to the loss of many jobs in certain fields, but the medical field has stayed consistent. With all the new technologies beginning to emerge in the medical field there will be more jobs needed to produce such technologies.
However, only a select few are able to develop these products. They will need to train others in order to allow these jobs to flourish. Vivek Wadhwa, Vice President of Innovation and Research at Singularity University, states that “Manufacturing is also destined to become a technology industry. The jobs of the future will be in creating 3D designs and maintaining and operating sophisticated computer machinery. We should expect to see the commercial availability of a new generation of robots. ” I believe that what Wadhwa is implying is true.
Technology has allowed for much of the progress seen in medicine in recent years. Many complicated procedures that are able to be produced due to our advance technology that scientists develop to enhance the way things may be in the future in terms of health care. Remote clinical monitoring of patients, telemedicine, computer-aided surgery, robotics, and needle-free drug delivery are just a few of some of the developing processes. But according to Amitabh Chandra, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, technology may not be the only reason for the major advances in medicine.
“It’s not technology per se that causes growth in health care expenditures – it’s the patients with full insurance coverage who demand the latest prosthetic hip. Thus U. S. health care spending as a percentage of GDP has risen rapidly compared to other countries because the reimbursement system encourages the widespread diffusion of both old and new technology. ” Even though technology plays a big part – if not the most important part – other factors, such as the patients, are part of the boom in the medical field.