Medical Inventions and Innovations

Posted by Ang Mangkok on May 25, 2011 in Health | 0 comments

On the entrepreneural skills of medical inventors and innovators many people don’t realize the scale and speed of medical innovations and inventions being made in the US. It is often times dizzying to see how fast an innovation gets superseded by a better one. Many people outside the US don’t even get to observe the pace of change. Often times, what they see is mostly the relatively “matured” version of an innovation that has proven to sell in the international market.

I happen to have a direct access to this fast innovation pace. For example, a medical department has changed its endoscopic system three times in two years, the latest two changes made within one year! First, they switched from a very good system to a high definition (HD), then to a super HD with wider HD screens. Why? The department wants to always have the latest and best technology and the best seems to get better almost every month.

New innovations seem to get introduced to us every month.  An eye surgery department introduced three “world’s firsts” within one year. A quarter million dollar microscope seems to have a life span of merely a year. A month after a department bought a highly advanced microscope, they were informed that a better version is just out on the market and the department heads started drooling for the new version. HD color printers seem to have a life span of only 6 months. I can’t even remember how many times our HD printers were replaced with new ones within two years.

The staff  has barely the time to master a system when a new one is about to be introduced replacing the current one that they have just learned. It applies to both systems and individual machines.  A real life example: we were just finishing up the project to train the staff of one huge department in using computers for documentation when the CEO announced that they have launched a three-year multi-million dollars project to implement an integrated computer system for the entire corporation, not just single departments. And this new integrated system is totally different from what we have just finished implementing!

Another thing that I personally consider  ”amazing” is the Da Vinci robot system. It is a robotic “surgeon” controlled remotely by a real surgeon. I was given a rare chance to personally try  the robot hands on. Its visual system is unbelievable.  A three-dimensional image can be seen. It feels like you have just poked your own head inside the body of the patient and seeing everything there by your own eyes. The remote controls are shockingly easy to use and follows the natural movements of one’s fingers and hands.

One ought to see and try it hands on to believe. Oh by the way, while they are marketing the robots to the hospitals around the country (costs over a million dollars a piece), they are already developing a new version.

Same thing happens in other subsectors of the medical industry like pharmaceuticals. The search for new types of drugs is relentless and fast paced. The list is too long to write here.