Unfortunately I do not have the link of the video and neither did I take note of the title, but what I remember of it was that clinics were kinda like brought into the homes of patients. This is in the sense that patients can have doctor consultations right in their living room, which I feel really saves the whole time and effort bit for the elderly, especially, removing the need to travel to and from the hospital. One other feature I remember from the video was doctors in hospitals having everything electronic! Seeing a patient with electronic records, and also doing research with a team without pen and paper. If this is where we are heading for in terms of healthcare, I'd think it would definitely bring about greater efficiency for hospital staff, and perhaps being able to increase life expectancy for many patients in the long run.
Furthermore, something in the reading "Gates Foundation Global Health Strategy" brought up a fairly valid point. It was stated that both Bill and Melinda Gates had the belief that lasting improvements in health, education and poverty reduction are achievable, stating that these advancements would not simply vanish with people losing interest in it after a while. This kinda links up to the quote which prof also mentioned during the session- "Bio Business may well be our best hope for achieving sustainable development". I can agree with this to a large extent since bio business is based on the understanding of life sciences and life science processes. & since each and every living organism has some form of life science as a part of them (cells, genotypes, etc.), then definitely there would be some form of dependency on bio business for sustainable development.
One other interesting takeaway I got from the same reading was that Bill and Melinda Gates both focused on problems that have a major impact on people in the developing world but get too little attention/awareness, and funding. This was further backed up with their ability to invest with foresight which was combined with the use of technology, giving rise to new products designed specially for the poor. I felt that it's really true that the poorest of countries are just no exposed enough to the new arena of technologies that can help them by leaps and bounds (eg. vaccines), all due to the fact that the awareness of such healthcare advancement is not widespread enough. In my opinion, it certainly is a pity and it is definitely encouraging to know that the Gates Foundation is keen to look into this matter.
The presentations then went on to elaborate a little on medical tourism, the one on the kidney thing which was interesting to listen to, and the last one on the pharmaceutical industry. There was this question raised on whether anyone would be willing to go to a developing country to seek treatment/ for plastic surgery, etc. And this discussion gave me new insight as I never saw Thailand as a country that was known for its medical/healthcare business, and that my classmates were in fact willing to give it a shot! Frankly speaking, I would never have Thailand as one of my options for treatment (and nope i dont believe in plastic surgery haha), choosing developed countries like the US or the UK over Thailand anytime. This sees no relevance to biasness or whatsoever, but perhaps due to certain impressions that have been left upon us previously.
Something that could have been given more air time would probably be the issue on plastic surgery, maybe? I think that would be an interesting topic to discuss, whether the advancements of medical technology has positive impacts in the area of fake beauty, although this would probably bring up issues of ethics and things like that.
Overall, I'd rate the session 8/10 as it gave me comfort to know that when I grow old, medical technology grows with me too, and when that time comes, I wouldn't have to leave home to see the Doc for my aching back :P
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