Dispensary

Boomeritis

This post from the NY Times is interesting and again shows the opportunity that exists in servicing the needs of baby boomers with bone and joint problems.

Diabetes

NY Times has done a large feature on diabetes in India, following up on their continuing features on this subject.

If 35 million people today have diabetes with a projected 75 million by 2020, that is a lot of work for a new generation of diabetologists. Each patient with diabetes does not just have to be looked after with respect to sugar control and advise, but also needs to be evaluated for possible neurologic, cardiac, renal, and peripheral vascular disease complications.

Being a diabetologist is not a bad thing in this scenario, especially since these patients are also usually affluent and can pay.

Most certainly, the insurance companies are going to shy away from reimbursing diabetes related disease, except possibly for the first episode.

Health monitoring remotely

One trend that will eventually catch on everywhere is patient monitoring from the house. The NY Times has a feature on this issue, this week and talks about monitoring of pacemakers, blood sugar levels, etc.

In our part of the world, where access to family physicians is so easy, this may not work, but it would still help to have a system such as this for a large number of people living alone or with multiple chronic disabilities.

This is an idea whose time has come and needs to be worked upon.