The Benefits of Modern Medical Advancements

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There have been many new advancements in the medical field in the past few decades. Medical advancements improve people’s lives by prolonging lives, and reducing the risk of disease.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration regulators to re-engineer the complex review and approval process for new medical devices. The FDA last year announced a new Medical Device Innovation Consortium charged with simplifying the process of designing and testing new technologies (MacRae). The MDIC will help the industry to be more equipped to bring safe and useful medical devices to market quickly and at a lower price (MacRae). They have started cutting back on Melanoma Biopsies with a handheld tool that was approved by the FDA for multispectral analysis of tissue morphology. It helps cause it reduces the number of patients left with unnecessary scars, with an added bonus of eliminating the cost of unneeded procedures (MacRae). Another new advancement that would help a lot of people is electronic aspirin. A technology under clinical investigation at the Autonomic Technologies Incorporation is a patient powered tool for blocking SPG signals at the first sign of a headache (MacRae). The process involves a permanent implantation of a small nerve stimulating device in the upper gum of your mouth on the side of your head that is usually affected by a headache. A big improvement which helps with people who cant afford the normal cost of Diabetes and helps reduce the risk or disease that can be spread through blood is the needle free Diabetes sugar monitor. It is a transdermal biosensor that reads blood analyses through the skin without drawing blood. The technology involves a handheld toothbrush like device that removes just enough of the top layer of s...

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...000 Americans die each year as a result of medical errors in hospitals, a number greater than the number of people killed annually from car accidents, breast cancer or AIDS (The Impact of Medical Technology on Healthcare Today). The total national cost including disability and medical expenses of preventable adverse medical events is running between $17-$29 billion dollars on average (The Impact of Medical Technology on Healthcare Today).

In most of the cases we analyzed, technological innovations in medicine and the devices used to help are positive. Technology often leads to more spending, but outcomes improve by even more. Outcomes are slightly better, because of the prolonging of many lives, reduced risks for disease and the affordability of all this but there are always new problems and inconveniences we face and we will always be looking for an answer to it.

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