Again, via Silicon.com the Council for Science and Technology is recommending government funding for six technology sectors. We’re taking a quick overview of IA implications now. In this post we examince healthcare technology.

At first glance, it’s hard to think of a technology field that gets more press (and few that get more funding) than healthcare technology. Just to take the example used in the Silicon.com article, the Mobile Clinical Assistant has gotten a lot of press, including some coverage here. That coverage produced some fairly negative feedback which you can see at our post.

Much of the funding has been from the private sector, ranging from nanotech firms looking to speed drug delivery and improve targeting, to extending wireless coverage on healthcare campuses to enable tracking of blood, newborns, assets and staff. My preliminary question about this is what gap in technology exists that private companies are not addressing? Apart from orphan drugs, my suspicion is that government funding is needed only to buy the latest products and services. I have no quarrel with this, but am not sure new programmes are needed–just bigger budgets.

IA in healthcare is fraught. Healthcare needs inclusive and comprehensive information about an individual to treat them. They need to store a lot of it in case the individual comes back for more. The information has to be available wherever the patient presents. And you still have to protect their privacy. I don’t think anybody has solved this one yet. We’ll address this at greater length in our next post.