Medical Technology

House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the rise of information technology in medicine "will cause a revolution and will lower the cost of health care. " A technological revolution? Yes. Large savings? No. And one out of two is not good enough for government work. New technology can indeed lower the cost of diagnosis and treatment. But far more typically, it enables doctors to do things they couldn't do before, or reduces the pain and risk of medical procedures. When these things happen, the cost of medicine goes up, not down.

The view through the University of Pennsylvania's newest electron microscope reveals a world of detail so tiny it was thought inaccessible only a few years ago. Magnified by a factor of 10 million, individual atoms take fuzzy form and do a kind of dance inside molecules. The microscope, housed in a narrow brick building off Walnut Street, is a far cry from the familiar staple of high school biology. Eight feet tall and fed 200,000 volts through a cable as wide as a firehose, it heats up the entire room.

RE JENICE Armstrong's recent column on herpes: As a single, 31-year-old African-American woman who's been infected since I was 16, I'm dismayed by the ignorance and the lack of resources. Until recently, I kept my condition strictly secret. I was involved with a man for eight years and didn't tell him. I always knew I could never have any meaningful relationship with a man without telling him. After eight years, the possibility of marriage came up. I disclosed the fact that I had herpes, got all the information I could and reported it to him. We decided not to marry because we both realized that we had not shown each other our true selves.

For Maureen Callaghan, today was to be a time to celebrate as she and her classmates filed into the Academy of Music to accept their associate degrees in medical technology from Hahnemann University's School of Allied Health Professions. Instead, some of them will be wearing yellow armbands over their black graduation robes to protest the university's decision to discontinue a baccalaureate program in medical technology that they had been scheduled to enter in August. "I was looking forward to graduation as a great experience.

Shriners' Hospital officials confirmed yesterday that they will build a new, $60 million charitable hospital adjacent to Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia. The new hospital, expected to open by 1996, will replace the 66-year-old Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children on Roosevelt Boulevard in the Northeast. The Shriners will build on North Broad Street near Tioga Street, on the site of the former Fishers' restaurant and three houses, now under demolition. Temple acquired the property last year and will resell it to the Shriners.

One snowy January day, Dr. Richard Skaroff set off for what is usually a 5- minute drive to Florence Lapin's house. But with the snow falling so steadily, the travel time was tripled. That, not the slippery roads or poor visibility, seemed to bother Skaroff. He had a particularly important mission to complete. Lapin, 73, had just spent the last month and a half in the hospital, recovering from a fractured elbow, a subsequent heart attack and then the dislocation of the injured elbow.

Other industrialized countries have succeeded far better than the United States in controlling rising health care costs. Between 1982 and 1989, six big European countries actually reduced the proportion of the gross domestic product spent on health care. In others, the proportion was either unchanged or the increase was small. Obviously someone is doing something right. Prof. Brian Abel-Smith of the London School of Economics studied how these countries' success. The key, he concluded, is a government effort, through regulation or strict budgets, to limit supply, not demand - the supply of doctors, hospital beds and medical technology and procedures.

Safeguard Scientifics Inc., Wayne, said today that it is investing $25 million in PixelOptics, a Roanoke, Va., medical technology company developing electronically focusing prescription eyewear. Safeguard, a holding company that buys stakes in growth-stage life sciences and technology businesses, is part of a group of investors that put $45 million into PixelOptics. The Virginia company, founded in 2005, is trying to commercialize its emPower product, which reduces or eliminates distortion in multifocal lenses, Safeguard said.

The play was cool, careful, calculating. The most flamboyant of chess players, Garry Kasparov, wasn't exhibiting his usual panache, but he was winning. And once, when he made a particularly inspired move, his opponent - IBM's mighty "Deep Blue" supercomputer - crashed. Score one for the humans - this time. Exhibiting human ingenuity, Kasparov made a brilliant adjustment to his first-match defeat. He won going away. But it seems only a matter of time before the rapidly evolving supercomputer emerges as the invincible grand master.

A pilot vocational-education course in health care that has federal funding was approved by the Marple Newtown school board at its business meeting last Thursday. The program in allied health and science technology is a cooperative undertaking by the Marple Newtown and Radnor School Districts and Bryn Mawr Hospital, said Thomas G. Kerr, Marple Newtown assistant superintendent for instruction and staff development. Educators expect about 15 high-school juniors to attend the satellite health-care classes next year at Radnor High School and to do clinical laboratory work at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Safeguard Scientifics Inc., Wayne, said today that it is investing $25 million in PixelOptics, a Roanoke, Va., medical technology company developing electronically focusing prescription eyewear. Safeguard, a holding company that buys stakes in growth-stage life sciences and technology businesses, is part of a group of investors that put $45 million into PixelOptics. The Virginia company, founded in 2005, is trying to commercialize its emPower product, which reduces or eliminates distortion in multifocal lenses, Safeguard said.

Jeffrey P. Black is out as chief executive of Teleflex Inc., a Limerick firm he has led through a transformation from a diversified industrial manufacturer to one focused on medical technology. Replacing Black is a board member, Benson F. Smith, who for 25 years worked at Teleflex competitor C.R. Bard Inc., rising to the positions of president and chief operating officer, Teleflex said Monday. The company's shares gained 89 cents, or 1.6 percent, to close at $57.21 on the New York Stock Exchange.

RE JENICE Armstrong's recent column on herpes: As a single, 31-year-old African-American woman who's been infected since I was 16, I'm dismayed by the ignorance and the lack of resources. Until recently, I kept my condition strictly secret. I was involved with a man for eight years and didn't tell him. I always knew I could never have any meaningful relationship with a man without telling him. After eight years, the possibility of marriage came up. I disclosed the fact that I had herpes, got all the information I could and reported it to him. We decided not to marry because we both realized that we had not shown each other our true selves.

About 15 years ago, a hospital asked Paul Fox, whose Jenkintown company sells medical furniture and equipment, if he could supply a chair for a 500-pound patient. He was stunned. "I had never sold a chair for somebody who weighed 500 pounds," he said. It is a measure of how much Americans have grown that such requests are no longer unusual. "We could sell 10 to 15 pieces a month today," Fox said. The obesity epidemic means that more patients are maxing out equipment meant to safely hold people who weigh no more than, say, 250 to 350 pounds.

Viasys Healthcare Inc., a Conshohocken medical technology company, is being acquired by Cardinal Health Inc., the second-largest U.S. drug distributor, for $1.42 billion. After the deal, which has been approved by both companies' boards, is completed this summer, Cardinal Health said yesterday that Viasys would become a wholly owned subsidiary. Cardinal Health, an $80 billion company in Dublin, Ohio, said the acquisition would expand its clinical and medical product offerings worldwide and establish Cardinal as a leader in the $4 billion respiratory-care market.

It is time that we in the United States learn to think of health care as an economic opportunity, not a liability. Despite America's well-documented health-care delivery problems, America's actual health care is the best in the world. U.S. firms are responsible for some of the most important innovations in pharmacology and medical technology. Wealthy foreigners routinely come to the United States for advanced medical services with the best possible outcomes. To take advantage of this position, President Bush should create a new undersecretary for health in the Department of Commerce to promote the American system of health care worldwide.

Terri Schiavo, a young woman kept alive in a persistent vegetative state for 13 years by being fed artificially through a tube inserted into her stomach, is a tragic example of what happens when families must make decisions about care when technological advances prolong a life some might view as "not worth living. " People in a such a state have no awareness and can feel no pain, but eyes-open unconsciousness and other non-intentional primitive autonomic responses such as eye movement, swallowing, smiling and grimacing, may remain functioning.

The view through the University of Pennsylvania's newest electron microscope reveals a world of detail so tiny it was thought inaccessible only a few years ago. Magnified by a factor of 10 million, individual atoms take fuzzy form and do a kind of dance inside molecules. The microscope, housed in a narrow brick building off Walnut Street, is a far cry from the familiar staple of high school biology. Eight feet tall and fed 200,000 volts through a cable as wide as a firehose, it heats up the entire room.

Medical technology has made it more feasible for players to come back from what used to be career-threatening knee injuries, but that does not mean the rehabilitation process is any easier. Athletes still must put in countless hours of arduous rehab to regain their previous form. This season at Cherry Hill East, basketball players Lauren Butler and Elyse Mitchell went through the process together. Having each other to compare notes with has made the recuperation period a little more tolerable.

Michael Hartman of Lebanon remembers the first time he saw a 9-week-old fetus in the womb. "It looked like a big, old blob," he said. But the moment changed his life forever. "I thought it was just amazing that there was this little person in there," he said. In 1987, he graduated from Thomas Jefferson University with a degree in ultrasound technology and has worked in the field since. Since Hartman graduated, profitable jobs - particularly those in the fields of biotechnology and cytotechnology - have rained down in the Philadelphia region, offering starting salaries of $40,000 a year, signing bonuses, and moving expenses.