Diagnostic accelerator could help cut healthcare costs

Brigham clinicians are working with the engineering community at Wyss to see how they can best use the technology to improve patients' health. 

MobiHealthNews reports that Dr David Walt, Professor of Pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is looking forward to using the new technology to help hospitals with patient care as well as making it easier for doctors who are managing discharged patients.

How it will help healthcare

"These include novel tests that can be done in the hospital to inform patient care, tests that can be run at mobile health units or pharmacies, and also at-home tests that will help physicians manage recently discharged patients to ensure they are recovering properly," he said.

“Technology developers often develop new tools and cool tech without having any idea of where the technology can make an impact,” he explained. “Consequently, even after a technology has been developed, finding the right application can take years.”

“We expect to receive potentially hundreds of ideas over the coming year,” Dr. Walt said. “We need to triage them into different buckets: clearly impactful ideas where we have an immediate technology solution and can make rapid progress, ideas where we need to do either biomarker discovery or significant technology development, and ideas where we need to understand the clinical problem better or may require additional engagement with the clinicians and market research.”

Meanwhile, the European health insurance market is forecast to grow at a rate of six per cent over the next five years from US$272.78 billion in 2020. Poor lifestyle habits, a rise in the number of people suffering from chronic diseases, an increasing number of road accidents, and a rise in prescription costs, were all to blame for increased costs and claims said ResearchandMarkets.com.