Newest Gadgets: Too Tricky? Too Expensive?

There’s a problem in today’s medgadget driven world of healthcare. Innovation is moving faster than most physicians and wallets can keep up. And in the same way that certain senators think that the Internet is a “series of tubes,” there are some physicians who can’t quite keep up with the insanity, and these physicians are teaching the poor prairie dogs we call med students. Not to mention that insurance companies move at the pace of a very full and exhausted three-toed sloth. Must we rely on biotech reps and consultants to introduce us to new technology, or will some new bias-free venue present itself?
Wired.com has an article on an example of the challenges healthcare faces in keeping up with the crazy rush of gadgets. Here’s a short excerpt:

Despite its ability to predict dangerous and even deadly drug reactions, a high price tag and lack of familiarity with the technology have prevented doctors from embracing the world’s first DNA chip test to deliver personalized medicine.
For nearly two years, the AmpliChip P450 has been available from Roche Diagnostics to predict adverse reactions associated with antidepressants, which were recently associated with suicide in some young patients. But the device is nowhere near a household name like Prozac, one of the many drugs for which it can predict adverse reactions.
…Personalized medicine technologies, which can predict when a patient might respond badly to a particular drug, have the potential to significantly reduce the 2 million hospitalizations and 1 million deaths caused by adverse drug reactions every year, according to the Pharmacogenomics Journal.
…But even the youngest generation of doctors aren’t learning much about state-of-the-art pharmacogenetic tests in medical school.
“I do remember a brief mentioning of patient genetic backgrounds and how they would affect dosing, response and side effects of certain drugs,” says David Lubin, a student at SUNY Upstate Medical School. “Aside from being aware that different liver enzyme types lead to different metabolism of medications, not much else was mentioned.”

Read the whole article here…