December 08-11, 2023

MedTech Impact 2023

Venetian/Palazzo Resort

Las Vegas, NV

(561) 893-8633

[email protected]

News & Insights

MEDTECH IMPACT MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Wearables Potential Impact on the Top 10 Causes of Death

In 2012, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) indicated about half of all adults (117 million people at the time) had one or more chronic health conditions. By 2014, seven of the top 10 causes of death were chronic diseases, with heart disease and cancer accounting for nearly 46% of all deaths each year. The costliest (86% of the nation’s $2.7 trillion annual health care expenditures) chronic health problems like heart disease, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and arthritis, are among the most prevalent, and continue to be on the rise. Considering lack of exercise or physical activity, poor nutrition, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol consumption is linked to most of these diseases – they also are the most preventable and reversible. However, compliance in lifestyle change, monitoring and medication management of chronic disease has proven to be a great challenge for clinicians and patients alike. Thanks to innovations and advancements in technology, this is becoming more accessible and convenient for both patient and clinician. Read More

Trio of Keynotes to Focus on Medical Technology Innovation

Pablos Holman
Pablos Holman Self-described futurist, inventor and notorious hacker “Inventing the Future of Food”

Innovative technologies are entering the medical field at a fast and furious rate – they’re quickly changing the care patients receive and will ultimately affect the health of our nation and the cost and administration of healthcare. This December, two powerful health care industry events will co-locate to provide clinicians, healthcare providers and ACO’s insight and solutions on industry-altering innovations including Sensoria Health’s smart clothing, that will continue to change the way medicine is practiced and evolve into better solutions for diagnosis, treatment, lifestyle change and prevention.  The 25th Annual American Academy of Anti-Aging’s World Congress, and the 2017 MedTech Impact Expo & Conference, held alongside each other at the Venetian/Palazzo Resort in Las Vegas, will feature complementing CME and non-CME education, inspiring world-renowned and accredited industry-leaders, and thousands of products and services. The format sets the stage for effective discussions as to how emerging technologies can and will affect all levels of patient care.

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Leading Sportswear and Healthcare Providers Team up to Launch “Smart Clothing” for an Aging Population

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, an older adult is treated for falls in emergency rooms across the country every 11 seconds. Every 19 minutes, an older adult dies from a fall. Stats show more than 800,000 65-or-older Americans suffer from falls each year, not only leading to hospitalizations and further safety concerns, but increasing healthcare costs for individuals and institutions alike.  With the 65+ population expected to rise from 46 million today, to 98 million plus by 2060, the safety concern isn’t going to go away and costs are sure to increase.

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Spotlight: Flex Innovation Center

Journalists attending AdvaMed’s 2017 The MedTech Conference were treated to a behind the scenes look at Flex’s Silicon Valley Innovation Center. Flex, (formally Flextronics) a $25B global electronics manufacturer with 200,000 employees globally, has been utilizing their expertise contract manufacturing across dozens of industries, to apply the lessons learned and fast paths to innovation that are accelerating product development.

Flex’s “Sketch to Scale” comes to life in their innovation center and robotics lab. From conception and design to prototyping and advanced engineering, Flex’s Innovation Center is where the majority of today’s “smart home” and “connected health” technology is designed and manufactured.

“We make everything for everybody,” said John Carlson, President of Flex Health Solutions. Highlights from the tour included flexible circuitry, printed on a stretchable material, that could (potentially) be used to monitor skin biometrics, a sweat sensor that is able to read blood glucose levels from sweat, and an advanced robotics lab that allows Flex to streamline the R&D, design and manufacturing process for their clients.

For more information, visit www.flex.com.

NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home: Updated & Upgraded

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), an independent non-profit organization that works to improve health care quality, has given its patient-centered medical home ‘a makeover’ in order to “reduce documentation burdens, lower costs, and facilitate quality improvements.”

The NCQA’s move marks a growing effort spearheaded by the healthcare industry’s leadership organizations in response to new technologies, uncertainty surrounding reimbursements, and heightened reporting requirements. The organization’s recent announcement of a comprehensive overhaul will enact changes that aim to create “a much more user-friendly version of the popular practice transformation framework that avoids the pain points of previous iterations of the program,” said Michael S. Barr, MD, Executive Vice President of the Quality Measurement and Research Group at NCQA.

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Physical Activity & Psychological Health

While research has long confirmed the strong correlation between exercise and psychological health, a recent study utilizing cellphone data to track activities and moods has confirmed that people who move are overall more content than people who sit.

While previous epidemiological studies have found that people who are active are less prone to depression and anxiety than sedentary people, the majority of these studies solely focused on negative moods. They generally relied on people recalling how they had felt, in addition to how much they had moved or sat in the previous weeks—with little concrete, tangible data to support their recollections.

The new study used a different approach, focusing on correlations between movement and the most positive emotion: happiness. The researchers also looked at what people reported about their respective activities, comparing it with objective measures of movement.

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Virtual Reality & Pain Reduction

Virtual Reality (VR) has been increasingly used to manage pain, trauma, and distress–particularly during painful medical procedures–as investigators hypothesize that VR acts as a nonpharmacologic form of analgesia by exerting “an array of emotional affective, emotion-based cognitive and attentional processes on the body’s intricate pain modulation system.” While originally recognized for its entertainment value, the application has expanded to a number of clinical areas.

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Wireless & Wearable: Why Wait?

The market of wearable medical technology is one of the most rapidly growing and advancing sectors in the global marketplace, now comprised of devices that have the potential to alter and enhance lifestyle, provide diagnostic and therapeutic support, and aid in injury prevention. With new evolving and transforming models in healthcare, these devices pave the way for new alternatives to traditional ways that practitioners & providers have collected data, performed diagnostic tests, and interacted with patients.

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Patient Medication Adherence: A ‘Smart’ Pill Bottle

All data and scientific literature indicate that poor medication adherence is directly correlated with increased hospitalizations, higher mortality rates, and a number of serious adverse health consequences. Approximately 50% of patients do not take their medications as prescribed, resulting in at least 100,000 preventable deaths per year. In terms of incurred costs, these numbers translate to between $100 billion and $300 billion dollars in spending, burdening the already weakened infrastructure of health care. Dr. Niteesh Choudhry, an internist at Harvard Medical School, describes the problem as “the final cascade of all of science.”

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Virtual Reality: Potential for Parkinson’s

A newly published review of evidence and data has indicated that virtual reality (VR) holds potential for rehabilitation of Parkinson’s disease, the neurodegenerative disorder that has historically been managed by a combination of medication and physiotherapy. Virtual reality technology has been proposed as a new and inventive rehabilitation tool, one that can potentially optimize motor learning and replicate real-life scenarios in order to improve functional activities.

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