Theory Post

As the debate for medical technology research continues, one might wonder if such a debate will ever end. I don't know if it will end, but I have thought of some solutions that would help facilitate an end. My first suggestion was a very interesting statement I came across while researching this debate. Gathering support for medical tech research can be difficult, but the difficulty is further increased when someone has to pay to find out whether or not technologies are succeeding. One example of this is the New England Journal of Medicine. People have to pay for this journal to find out whether or not technology has been successful, and how it is being used. So, people must first pay to support technology, and then they must pay to find out whether their paid support was worthwhile. Information on medical tech should be more widely available for free. That way more people would see the benefits technology provides. My next idea stems from data that might show that increasing allocation of money towards tech research might cause increases in medical cost. This problem partially arises from the cost of new employees who have to be trained and paid to operate new technologies. I believe that these costs are worthwhile and data should be given that shows how much technology has helped. Finally, technology should be developed for the field or age range that would be most helpful. Not to sound cruel, but technology for children is in a sense more worth the cost than technology for elderly. In many cases when an elderly person develops one illness more are soon to come. To use a crude metaphor, this situation is kind of like a car, eventually the car has many miles on it and, once one problem occurs, more and more problems develop since every part on the car has had lots of wear and tear. For this reason, technology should be focused first on children and then focus should be placed on older and older age groups.