Structure

For my Structure I chose my dorm room lamp. Its Over a 1 meter in length plugs into standard 120volt wall socket and provides light with a 10watt compact florescent bulb. I analyzed it over the meter, centimeter and millimeter scale lengths. At the one meter scale you have the lamp as a whole its wooden frame and stand which holds it off the ground and its power cord which draws energy from the wall and up through its frame. Power is drawn up to the section I analyzed on the next scale level the head, the section in which the primary job of the lamp is done. Here we have the shade to defuse the light it produces and the socket which connects the lamp as a whole to its most central object and the object which I looked at for the next scale level the bulb. The bulb is the most significant piece of the lamp. Like in a tree where the primary act of absorbing energy from the sun is done in the leaves so is the primary job of a lamp, producing light, done in the bulb. Yet, like a leaf the bulb is useless on its own it must be connected back to larger structure to fulfill its assigned task. Like a leaf it must be held off the ground by larger structural frame work to be effective and like a leaf it must be connected to a circulatory frame work to take in and release energy it need to function. The interdependence of structures is clear a power cord, a lamp shade or even a bulb have no utility on their own, but when combined together they can work to their full potential evenly disturbing light throughout a room.

Reducing the cost of health care -- “Information exchange and Interoperability”

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/hlthaff.w5.10v1.pdf

Here the claim is made that going beyond simply having greater use of electronic medical records to a system with “fully standardized HIEI [health care information exchange and interoperability could yield a net value of $77.8 billion per year.” The claim is supported with data highlighting the current cost of Information exchange. It although it seems unlikely that the authors have a vested financial interest in seeing the change as previously stated many companies stand to gain by providing the services require for the switch.

Reducing the Cost of HealthCare-- preventative care

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/329/5/321

Using “preventative care” to reduce medical cost intrinsically makes sense. Reducing the number of people the number of people suffering from chronic conditions would certainly reduce costs more then any one gadget, but “preventative care” is broad vague and hard to define. This article makes the statement that “Preventable illness makes up 70 percent of the burden of illness and the associated cost.” It goes on to discuss how health promotion in the work place can help reduce costs. Information like “recent review of 28 separate studies of health promotion in the workplace emphasized the effects on documented cost reduction, with the savings generally being three or more times greater than the program costs” is given to suppose their claim.

Reducing the Cost of HealthCare -- video conferencing to reduce the amount of out patient care

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3767516

This paper “Reducing the Cost of Frequent Hospital Admissions for Congestive Heart Failure” discusses two ways to reduce costs created by out patient care for CHF. The First being the more technically advanced: using 2-way video conferencing with an “integrated electronic stethoscope” to check on patients and reduce hospital visits. The second being the simpler use of nurse phone calls to reduce the need for visits. The article states that the video conferencing saved 86% while regular telephone calls saved 84 % over the control. Their data comes from 37 CHF patients broke into three groups: one receiving care via video, the second over the phone and the third being a control with normal out patient care. The study lasted 6 months. This claim seems viable as it is accompanied by such definitive results. Although to see whether these kinds of methods could be used for cost savings in broader range of ailments would require a lot more testing.

Reducing Healthcare Costs -- New Microchip Technology Performs 1,000 Chemical Reactions At Once

Back in the vein of Individual device advances leading to a reduced cost in Healthcare. UCLA researches claim to have created a “microchip” which can perform and test “1,000 chemical reactions at once.” In theory this could help greatly in reducing costs in medical research. No direct evidence is give of this device reducing medical costs, as its still in development, but testing seems to show that it fulfills its intended purpose. The UCLA website definitely has vested interest in the discussing the success of the Universities own researchers but, as a respected institution it also has a vested interest in giving credible information so as not to undermine its other researchers.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/new-microchip-technology-performs-97160.aspx

Reducing the Cost of HealthCare -- Medical Technology 'Arms Race' Adds Billions to the Nation's Bills

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/29/us/medical-technology-arms-race-adds-billions-to-the-nation-s-bills.html

We were discussing this article in my writing seminar on medical technology so, i figured i would use this post to highlight the fact that the exorbitant cost of Healthcare is largely due to medical Technology. This article is from 1991 but here are two more to pretty much the same effect from this year:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/health/02scans.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=pet%20scanners&st=cse

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/24/eveningnews/main5337931.shtml

The first article discusses the progression of medical imagining technology and the rise in costs that comes with each advance. at the time it was written (and i see little reason to think that much has changed since the 90's): "Coronary bypass surgery... in the United States ... accounts for about $1 of every $50 spent on health care" even though "a study by the Rand Corporation ... found that more than 40 percent of such operations did very little, if anything, for the patients."

"magnetic resonance imaging alone is adding about $5 billion to the nation's health bill" while "90 percent of the time that neurologists order M.R.I. scans no structural damage to the patient's nervous system is detected."

The designers of medical technology always have a vested interest in seeing it used. In a filled where everyone feels entitled to the highest standard of care possible each new advance generally leads to increased costs across the board. While there is no denying the effectiveness of positron emission tomography and other highly advanced technologies; to reduce costs engineers cannot continue to always look to the most complicated solutions.

Reducing the Cost of HealthCare-“A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on Cellular Phone Technology”

“A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on Cellular Phone Technology”

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002075

“The goal of this study is to introduce and demonstrate the feasibility of a new concept in medical imaging that is centered on cellular phone technology and which may provide a solution to medical imaging in underserved areas. The new system replaces the conventional stand-alone medical imaging device with a new medical imaging system made of two independent components connected through cellular phone technology.”

This paper represents the concept of engineering a device not with the intent of improving its effectiveness over previous devices but instead aiming to improve affordability and ease of use. The idea is that costs would be reduced by using a single centralized Data Acquisition and viewing device which would be fed information from small portable scanners.

This is a very believable claim and one on which the authors state they have already done some successful testing. They many have a vested interest in seeing there produce succeed but no more so then the companies that are currently producing the more expensive stand alone versions.