Moving Medicine Forward

Community Thoughts on Moving Medicine Forward...

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   Can An Army Of Tech-Equipped Health Workers Bring Medicine To Remote Villages? by Ben Schiller via Fast Company “Last Mile Health hires workers with the equivalent of a sixth to twelfth grade education, many of whom have never had jobs before, and puts them through a six-month training program. It teaches them about community mapping, family planning, how to identify triggers for disease outbreaks, basic first aid, and other skills. Then it arms the workers with backpacks full of diagnostic devices and basic drugs, like malaria pills and antibiotics, and sends them into the countryside.”

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   The next generation of bandages will detect infections, release medicine, and more. by Aliya Barnwell via Digital Trends When tech and medicine meet, everyone benefits. The tech doesn’t have to be a new MRI or laser printed organs, either — even the lowly bandage can benefit from an upgrade. Different researchers worldwide are using their particular expertise to develop a host of newer, smarter, more effective bandages; many of which are steadily making their way out of the lab and into the real world. Here’s a quick overview of all the awesome bandage tech that you can expect to see in the not-so-distant future.

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   The Chatbot Therapist Will See You Now by Megan Molteni via WIRED “Created by a team of Stanford psychologists and AI experts, Woebot uses brief daily chat conversations, mood tracking, curated videos, and word games to help people manage mental health. After spending the last year building a beta and collecting clinical data, Woebot Labs Inc. just launched the full commercial product—a cheeky, personalized chatbot that checks on you once a day for the price of $39 a month.”

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   Calling All Snackers: Here Comes a Fitbit for Your Mouth by Rachel Metz via MIT Technology Review “While wearables have gotten pretty good at tracking a range of health-related activities, there’s still no simple, automated, unobtrusive way to track one of the vital things we all do every day: eat.”

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   How Redesigning The Abrasive Alarms Of Hospital Soundscapes Can Save Lives by Christina Couch via Fast Company “Conducting extensive research on the needs of health care providers and alarm fatigue—a condition that occurs when people become desensitized after being exposed to too many alerts—Sen is currently prototyping sound environments that help patients and providers cut through the clamor, potentially improving both patient health and medical care in the process.”