Medical Technology Advancement and It's Contributions

Medical Technology in Canada

by Nadeem Esmail & Dominika Wrona

Medical technologies are an important component of medical care and can provide significant positive benefits to patients. Medical technologies can advance the identification and treatment of disease, can provide for more comfortable treatment regimes and reduce pain, offer new treatment options for ill individuals where none previously existed, and can provide a safer environment for both patients and providers fortunate enough to have access to them. In many cases, medical technologies can accomplish these improvements cost effectively, and in some cases can reduce costs while improving outcomes. So how good is Canada’s health care system at ensuring that patients have high-tech health care available to them?

Advanced medical technologies can deliver numerous benefits to both patients and those funding the health care system. For example, newer advanced diagnostic equipment such as multi-slice Computed Tomograhpy (CT) scanners, more powerful Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners (both) stand-alone and combination PET/CT units) allow for greater accuracy, speed, and efficiency in diagnosing medical problems. They also provide less invasive procedures for the diagnosis of disease, which can facilitate earlier and more localized treatment. Doctors can use more sophisticated scanners to observe and learn more about the body’s functions and location of disease without subjecting the patient to surgery for either diagnosis or needless interventions. For example, a PET scan can detect a lung cancer that has spread, thus avoid a futile operation. It can also determine if liver tumours can be safely removed, and can help determine if chemotherapy treatment is working, or whether the drug cocktail being provided needs to be changed (Priest, 2006). PET scanners also allow some patients to avoid surgical biopsies for the diagnosis and identification of cancers.

New medical devices can also offer new treatment options to patients who were previously left untreated. Consider the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD), which works on the same principal as an external defibrillator, but is implanted in a patient’s chest. The ICD sends an electrical current to the heart when it detects serious arrhythmia, or a stoppage, in order to restore normal rhythm. This device allows patients at risk of sudden cardiac arrest to live independently and not be under constant surveillance.

In countless way, medical technologies can improve access to care, improve effectiveness of care, decrease morbidity and mortality, speed up recovery, and increase patient comfort. These benefits are not just theoretical, but have been quantified in published studies.

A recent report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (2007) looked at trends in hospital use. It suggested that “advances in medical technology [are] leading to more efficient ways of treating inpatients” (p. 15). The report also found that more operations are being performed as outpatient day surgeries across Canada; the number of hospital procedures performed as outpatient day surgeries increased by 30.6 percent over 10 years, while the number of inpatient surgeries decreased by 16.5 percent. The total number of surgeries increased by 17.3 percent. Further, the age-standardized hospitalization rate decreased by 25 percent over the 10 years, falling from roughly 11 out of 100 Canadians being hospitalized in 1995-1996, to roughly 8 out of every 100 Canadians in 2005-2006. The total number of days Canadians spent in acute care hospitals had also decreased, falling from approximately 23 million days in 1995-1996 to 20 million in 2006 (a 13.1 percent reduction). Moreover, even though the average length of hospital stay remained unchanged since 1995-1996 at 7.2 days, the age-adjusted national average length of hospital stay decreased from 7.5 days in 1995-1996 to 7 days in 2005-2006 (a 6.7 percent decrease). The report made no explicit link between the reduced length of hospital stay, the reduced likelihood of hospitalization, the increased reliance on outpatient day surgery, and advances in medical technology. However, the correlation between advances in medical technology (pharmaceutical, surgical, diagnostic, and otherwise) and shorter hospital stays is worth noting and has been confirmed by studies examining some forms of medical technologies (see, for example, Lichtenberg, 2003).

Here is a video of a Canadian Contributors for Medical Technology and Research:

2009 New Pioneers Awards

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Infornation’s [CIHI] Natinal Survey of Selected Medical Imaging Equipment (2006b) allows for such an examination. The survey data, available on the CIHI’s website at www.cihi.ca, provides the location, age, and select specifications of CT scanners, PET scanners, MIR machines, SPECT scanners, gamma cameras, lithotripters, angiography suites, cardiac catheterization labs, and select fusion technologies (PET/CT and SPECT/CT) in hospitals and free-standing facilities across Canada on January 1, 2006. Which means Canadians contributed far advance medical technology in helping us understanding the internal body system, and way to prevent and detect critical disease condition.

Source:

Web document on university program or department Web site

Nadeem Esmail & Dominika Wrona (2008). APA style essentials. Retrieved August 2008, from Fraser University, Department of Health Web site: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/researchandpublications/publications/6122.aspx

Studies in Health Care Policy "Medical Technology in Canada"
References Web site: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/product_files/Medical_Technology_in_Canada.pdf

Image Source:

http://www.wahabtech.com/files/images/medical_equipment.jpg

www.cartoonstock.com/.../cwl/lowres/cwln192l.jpg

Video Source:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWDt_EyKQaI

Artificial Selection - Good or Bad?

(Choosing the Fittest)

Based on the encyclopaedia term definition for artificial selection (or selective breeding) describes intentional breeding for certain traits, or combination of traits. The term was utilized by Charles Darwin in contrast to natural selection, in which the differential reproduction of organisms with certain traits is attributed to improved survival or reproductive ability (“Darwinian fitness”). As opposed to artificial selection, which humans favour specific traits, in natural selection the environment acts as a sieve through which only certain variations can pass. Humans have carried out artificial selection (or selective breeding) for thousands of years. In one sense, the history of farming is the history of artificial selection.

We humans have been artificial selecting animals and plants for thousands of years ago. Animals and plants were first domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean; in the area known as the Fertile Crescent. And the first animal to be domesticated was the dog, from wild wolves around 13,000 years ago. In all parts of the world our ancestors realised they could breed animals and crops that in some way produced a greater yield of food. Equally by breeding from animals that displayed particular behavioural traits, early farmers were able to make use of abilities such as herding or hunting by dogs.

Being able to predict what the next generation to an animal or food plant would be like, turned the early farmers into genetics, long before genes were thought of. And knowing these facts when can’t disregard bugling questions behind artificial selections – is it good or bad?

I believe artificial selection is not bad at all; these vast changes in occupation from hunting and gathering to cultivating food crops and raising livestock had important consequences for human cultural evolution. Agriculture permitted the establishment of permanent villages and ultimately cities, city-states, and empires. Increasing agricultural productivity freed a significant portion of the population from the demands of growing food and allowed them to take up scientific, technological, religious, and artistic endeavours. These facts prove that artificial selection is not bad at all, rather helpful to us indeed.

Artificial selection has resulted in plants that are more disease-resistant, cows that produce more milk, and racehorses that run faster. One must wonder what will come next, which would lead us to this question – under what circumstances should humans be artificially selecting plants or animals, if any?

Humans can only be artificially selecting plants or animals for the following acceptable circumstances:

Animals with leaner meat

Animals that produces more milk

High-yielding and stand ability of crops (e.g. corn)

Plants with large amount of nutrients or nutritious plants

Resistant to high level of salinity (e.g. wheat, in which high level of salt are applied to the soil to kill almost all of the affected wheat plants, but almost certainly a few plants will survive. These survivors can then be used to breed a line of salt-tolerant plants)

Screening (the breeder’s term for selecting certain individuals from a large population of specimens) is now possible in the test tube where it is referred to as in vitro selection. Individual cells from plants may be subjected to certain chemical toxins. Those are able to grow despite the presence of a toxin are mutants that are naturally resistant. Using this method, corn with 10 to 100 times more resistance to certain herbicides has been developed.

Evolution of Corn

For example, corn breeding, a plant breeder trying to increase yields might pollinate a number of high- yielding corn plants with the pollen of other high-yielding ones in the hope that the offspring will produce even more corn. Alternatively, if the breeder wants corn that has a high yield and will tolerate drought (a commonly desired pair of traits), he might try pollinating drought-tolerant corn with pollen from high-yielding corn.

Other methods like enhancing reproduction.

Although artificial selection is mainly an advantage, but because of sweeping and comparatively rapid cultural changes, another slower one is taking place – we are beginning to direct the evolution of increasing numbers of plants and animal species. Like one circumstance which is disturbing is the artificial selection for “Perfect Pet.” This can also be a down side to artificial selection. And because this process essentially removes variation in a population, selectively bred organisms can be especially susceptible to diseases or changes in the environment that would not be a problem for a natural population. Inbreeding — the mating of closely related individuals — is also a problem. In dogs, this has resulted in breeds that have health issues ranging from decreased life span to hip dysplasia. Therefore, artificial selection is indeed a good thing; we just have to be aware of the circumstances and consequences to our decisions in selecting plants or animals.

Video Source:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K6ja_ZJkKk&feature=related

Picture Source:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/images/news/corn.gif

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/geology/images/dogs_sm.jpg

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/kitchen/2008_03_21-GMFoods.jpg

Sources:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-artificial-selection.htm

http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/14.html