24 results
Posted on 11.01.2017
Great expectations for 2017
As ‘thinking season’ kicks off, the focus is on how technology and big data can deliver better value healthcare to more people than ever before. January is a time for reflection, planning and predicting what lies ahead. It’s the season for assessing the mega-trends that will shape our future and working out how we will […]
Posted on 17.08.2016
Rhinological disorders: a health priority for the future
What is your day-to-day work like? I’m the head of a busy Department in a University Hospital in Bratislava and I’m also the Secretary General of IFOS – the International Federation of Otorhinolaryngological Societies. My department is dealing with both inpatient and outpatient care. We are also a teaching hospital so aside from dealing with […]
Posted on 20.01.2016
Primary Care in the New Health Economy
Global healthcare systems confound consumers and clinicians alike and cost more each year. Overall, we spend nearly US$10 trillion globally on healthcare with a wide disparity of access and outcomes. Chronic health conditions are increasing in incidence and prevalence in developed and emerging markets, further taxing clinicians, payers and hospitals. To serve growing populations of […]
Posted on 30.11.2015
How being mobile again can help health systems. Patients have known for a long time. Everybody else will know now.
Representatives of Health Authorities and Payers seem to have mixed feelings about orthopaedic implants. They all know someone in their immediate environment who has had a new knee or a new hip and who is very satisfied with it. They also know that these people have regained their quality of life after a long period […]
Posted on 24.11.2015
Why we support a new common Code of Ethics for the medical technology industry
At W.L. Gore we took the decision to review our educational strategy well before the recommendation of the EDMA and Eucomed Boards to phase-out direct sponsorship of Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) to third party organised educational events was announced. We did this as our business leaders were getting increasingly concerned about the complexities of doing business […]
Posted on 27.10.2015
The need for a comprehensive approach for assessing the value of diagnostic information
Public and private healthcare payers around the world face substantial and evolving challenges in making good decisions on behalf of their ultimate clients—their beneficiaries or subscribers, i.e., people who are at risk of becoming patients. As agents for these potential patients, payers and providers must make prudent clinical and economic recommendations on how to obtain […]
Rare Diseases: Anything but rare
In linguistics, describing a word as a false friend implies that despite similarity in spelling or pronunciation, it actually has distinct – sometimes even contradictory – meanings in different languages. Describing rare diseases as ‘rare’ creates a similarly false association, one which implies they have a limited impact and scarcely occur. Drawing such a parallel does not reflect the reality for the approximately 30 million European citizens who have received a rare disease diagnosis. For them, a rare disease is anything but rare. Instead, it is an often long and terrifying crossing into largely unchartered waters that are characterised by a lack of information, specialists’ know-how and effective treatment.
5 WHO insights into conquering the medtech mismatch
One central theme revolved around the Second World Health Organisation’s Global Forum on Medical Devices – the WHO recognises medical devices as an investment and not a cost. However, there is a mismatch between innovation of medical devices and public health needs. 677 participants from 108 countries took their pick from 28 workshops and 4 plenary sessions. Held on November 22-24th in Geneva, the event enabled academia, international organisations, industry and NGOs to gain insight from 159 presentations, 144 posters (one of which was presented by EDMA on Lab Tests Online), and 8 films.
What mobile diagnostics can do for the rest of the 90%
Consider the cell phone.
As an engine of change, it is a romantically disruptive one, a technology that crisscrosses borders and thrives on connection in all its forms – to networks, to people, to the world. Already, in areas of Africa and India, mobile phones play every part at once, bankers and pharmacists and secretaries rolled into one. In developing countries, the path of least resistance to modernization is flung up one phone tower at a time. They have taken a platform we have spent on Angry Birds and advertisements, and woven a way of life.