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Medical innovation rests for no man: it is an ongoing discovery that enables healthcare professionals to provide the best and most effective treatment to patients, day in and day out. Take a look at the medical devices and medical innovations below to get a glimpse at what 2019 already has in store for medicine and its stakeholders.
Alternative Pain Therapy and the Opioid Crisis
The opioid crisis is somewhat of a public health emergency, particularly in developed countries. Myriad chronic pain afflictions are receiving blanket treatment in the form of prescription opioids. It goes without saying that every person’s individual differences run deeper than just appearance and personality traits – they are genetic. As such, you might expect that pain therapy was somewhat customized to suit a person’s individual response to medication.
Until now, that has not been the case. Millions of patients have found opiate-based analgesics to be ineffective or not long lasting, and have faced stigma in their effort to attain more painkillers. Now, we are looking at clinically validated alternative therapies to chronic pain.
Pharmacogenomic testing uses a patient’s genetic makeup to predict their metabolism of drugs, including opioids, and can aid in avoiding adverse or ineffective reactions. The reduction of ineffective prescriptions will lead to improved healthcare for all, and reduce the stigma around pain medication.
Artificial Intelligence: Working Smarter, not Harder
Artificial intelligence is still every industry’s favourite buzzword, but for good reason. AI is set to play an important role in healthcare, giving support in myriad departments and functions. AI is changing the way applications assist healthcare professionals by offering decision support, image analysis and patient triage.
Point of care decision making can be stressful, and you wouldn’t want critical decisions to affect you negatively because your healthcare professional was under pressure to make them. AI assists in decision making based on concrete, patient-centric data analysis.
Custom 3D Printed Healthcare
Whilst 3D printing technology is not new, it continues to have unprecedented success in the healthcare industry. Medical devices can now be enhanced and customized to meet the specific needs of each and every patients. By customizing devices such as prosthetics, implants and stents to the dimensions and requirements of the patient, the success rate of each medical intervention is increased. The body is more likely to accept devices that are compatible with the individual’s anatomy; whilst complications are minimized.
Advanced Hemorrhagic Stroke Diagnosis
Hemorrhagic strokes are less common than ischemic strokes, but are still responsible for forty per cent of stroke deaths. When blood escapes from a ruptured blood vessel in the brain, timing is everything, and diagnosis is key. Rapid diagnosis is directly correlated to effective treatment, as uncontrolled bleeding can quickly damage the brain.
One of the medical innovations is this area is a prehospital hemorrhagic scanning visor that quickly detects bleeding in the brain. This diagnostic tool significantly speeds up diagnoses and saves critical time in patient treatment.
Stay tuned to the Glenmed blog for further updates on the state of the medical devices industry in 2019. You can browse our comprehensive collection of medical devices across some of the world’s best brands, right here.
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