Many EU governments have made deep cuts to healthcare spending during the financial crisis. But changing demographics mean drastic change is around the corner, with four challenging objectives.
As life expectancy continues to rise, more people are expected to suffer from age-related chronic diseases, putting pressure on healthcare systems.
The Dutch National Institute for Public health and the Environment (RIVM) has mapped out future health outcomes for the Netherlands, based on four objectives.
"None of these perspectives will be the reality," warned Henk Hilderink, a senior scientific research at RIVM, as he presented the scenarios at the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG) in Bad Hofgastein in Austria on Wednesday (1 October).
While policymakers, doctors and other health campaigners want to educate the public to take care of its health, the Internet is making the task ever more difficult.
Health literacy refers to the capacity to make sound health decisions in the context of everyday life, both at home, in the community, at the workplace, in the healthcare system and in the political arena. It's linked to general literacy, and it describes a person's knowledge and ability to apply health information in order to make good decisions about their well-being.
However, with the emergence of new technologies, citizens will face more complex health decisions.
Odds are good you’ve seen your doctors using computers a lot more in the past three years. During appointments or while at the hospital, they’ve stopped at a desktop computer or taken a tablet out of their pocket. It’s not because technology lets them provide better care, it’s because federal legislation is changing the way health care providers and insurers use computers.
When Max Levchin first started telling the world about Glow, one of the companies to come out of his HVF incubator, last summer, it sounded like little more than an app to help women get pregnant. The app let women track their periods and offered some community features.
But today, the company has added features to its app to help it also cater to women seeking to avoid pregnancy. And it has a new app, Glow Nurture, that caters to pregnant women. It has also raised $17 million in a second round of institutional funding.
Investments in digital health companies this year has risen to $3 billion — and the year is only three quarters over.
By the midyear point, 2014 digital health investments had already eclipsed 2013 investments. And investments have continue to accelerate since then. The total for this year is now twice the full-year total for 2013, according to a new report from the digital health accelerator Rock Health.
La maladie de Parkinson est une affection neurodégénérative chronique, qui évoluent lentement et dont l'origine est souvent inconnue. Elle cause la disparition progressive des neurones dopaminergiques dont la fonction est de fabriquer et libérer la dopamine, un neurotransmetteur indispensable au contrôle des mouvements, en particulier des mouvements automatiques.
It’s a strange sight: a paralyzed rat walking on its hind legs in a precise cadence, all controlled by a computer.
“It is a little bit Frankenstein,” says Gregoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, who in a paper published yesterday in Science Translational Medicine describes his efforts to use electronics to restore fluid, realistic movements to paralyzed animals.
Despite all the changes in American healthcare over the past few years, half of all Americans still get their insurance from their employer.
As more large employers self-insure, they’re under pressure to manage the health care costs racked up by their employees — in short, to keep them from running up so many doctor bills. This creates a nice opportunity for companies that make technology platforms designed to engage employees in health and wellness programs.
One aspect of Obamacare that you hear few complaining about is the way it will increase compensation for health providers who treat Medicare patients. In simple terms, providers will be given a fixed amount for taking care of a given patient population. Then every dollar they can avoid spending on patient care — while upholding quality standards — is one more dollar they can keep as profit. In a sense, doctors will no longer be paid for the patients they see; they’ll paid for patients they don’t see.
And the best way to save dollars spent on patient care is to either keep patients healthy in the first place or to make sure sick patients stay well enough to avoid ER visits and hospital readmissions.
A soft exoskeleton being developed by researchers at Harvard could let soldiers carry heavy backpacks over long distances or help stroke victims walk more steadily. The device, which helps propel the wearer’s legs forward, is extremely lightweight and efficient, and the researchers behind it were recently awarded a $2.9 million grant from DARPA to make the next version.
Exoskeletons augment the power of human limbs, allowing the wearer to carry heavier objects or walk for longer. Several impressive prototypes have been developed, but the big challenge is the amount of energy the devices use.
