http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/19/internet-ibm-cities-technology-breakthroughs-healthcare.html
Health Care
Staying Healthy In Big Cities
Rob Merkel, 05.20.10, 06:00 AM EDT
Why urban centers are the perfect place for ”smart health care.”
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This smarter approach is already beginning to take hold. In October 2009, during the height of the H1N1 flu outbreak, Duke University Health System used analytics tools to cull through 20 million electronic patient records for insights into chronic illness and medical history. High-risk patients, such as children with respiratory distress, were prioritized to receive the H1N1 vaccine. Via e-mail, Duke was able to update its patients on vaccine availability. It also used its system to contact more than 250,000 patients and provide education on how to avoid getting the flu and spreading it to others.
In the U.S. alone, an estimated $59 billion has been allocated for health care stimulus spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). With recent advances in technology and the improvements made possible by ARRA funding, we have the potential to infuse our existing health care systems with new intelligence. Technology alone can’t cure what ails us. But it can provide new ways to help those who treat our illnesses and battle major outbreaks do their jobs even better.
Rob Merkel is the Global HealthCare Service Line Leader for IBM Global Business Services. For 19 years he has helped many of the world’s leading health care brands, governments and institutions tackle their complex challenges.
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Sorry, but your vision for elites deciding what’s best is communism. The recent swine flu with the gooferment in charge was a disaster. Immoral, ineffective, and inefficient. Immoral because the gooferment robs wealth at gunpoint to provide “services” that folks don’t want, don’t need, and can’t afford. This is but one example. Ineffective because the shots were late to the marketplace, misdirected, poorly prioritized. But, rest assured, all the elite, politicians, and bureaucrats got theirs first. Argh! Finally inefficient because the cost was absurd, the doses were late, delivered long after the need, and they expired unused.
No, we need to shoot the FDA and put Walmart in charge of health care. It’ll be good, cheap, and available.
Freedom for those cranky individuals to buy what they need when they need it will motivate greedy drug makers to get what we want to buy to us in plenty of time.
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Don’t overlook the bias of the author. IBM will make big buxs off of this particular form of “corporate welfare”.
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How many people died from the swine flu? And, after the vaccine was delayed by red tape?
None of the elite, politicians, or bureaucrats, I’m sure.
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