Medical Technology: Part 1

This week's episode of Computer Chronicles features some technological advances in medicine and health from robotics to medical information management. [Episode #1918, First broadcast: 1/15/2002] We start off showing you an application for your PDA that helps you monitor your health by digitally keeping track of information such as medicine dosages or sugar levels. HealthEngage is a product from FireLogic that works as a data management resource for your body's health information. Sharon Pizer demonstrates how an asthma patient who normally uses paper and a pencil can digitally record, and share with a doctor, information such as peak flow meter ratings that measure lung functionality. Then, Dr. Mark Leavitt explains how Medscape is taking paper medical charts and turning them into a digital format. Medical charts with patient summaries come up in an instant and doctors who use a tablet computer for the application can enter information through speech recognition. And, a doctor can make this digital information available online for the patient through a highly secured site called aboutmyhealth.com. Next up is astounding new robotics technology that allows a doctor to perform a surgical procedure on a patient across the world. We show you the first ever complete surgical procedure that has been performed on a human being using tele-surgery. A doctor in New York uses the "Zeus Robotic Surgical System" developed by Computer Motion based in Santa Barbara, California to remove a gallbladder from a patient in France. It's made possible by a transatlantic fiber optic network by France Telecom that connects the remote surgeon to the robot in the operating room. Then, Dr. Harold Portnoy talks about a new website called YourSurgery.Com that can improve the communication between patients and doctors about likely outcomes and risks of surgery. The site educates the patient about the background of the medical problem, including the anatomy and pathology, and then