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As the keynote speaker at The 2011 itHealthcare Canada Conference and Exhibition on October 19th, Saint Elizabeth's Shirlee Sharkey is featured on the front page of itHealthcare Canada's online hub this month touting a very powerful message that is also part of the theme of this year's conference: technology and innovation are the drivers of the healthcare of tomorrow - bar none.
Technology and medicine have long intersected to create a bridge for scientists and medical practitioners to continue driving healthcare breakthroughs forward, but the need for hyper-focus on the robust use of big tech, IT, and computing power in medicine is increasingly becoming paramount. The most powerful companies in the world right now are tech giants like Apple and Google. Tech startups in Silicon Valley are enjoying a return to the halcyonic days of the late 1990s when VC firms were pouring millions into capitalizing and earmarking them.
Conversely, we are still seeing statistics coming out such as the alarming one today that shows that diabetes is becoming an epidemic of massive proportions, with 366 million diabetics worldwide and someone dying of diabetes somewhere on the planet every 7 seconds. It does not seem right that age-old diseases are becoming more of a problem while our exposure to cutting-edge technologies and innovations is at a fever pitch - there has to be more of an intersection of these two trends, resulting in better medical outcomes for a larger swath of people, regardless of what country they are living in or what economic circumstance they happen to be mired in.
Thankfully, there are medical innovators working doggedly and tirelessy behind the scenes. Another incredible story making the rounds today is the disclosure by a medical research team out of Stanford University in California about a new computing technology that can detect pain in the brainwaves of humans. The potential rewards of computers being able to alert caregivers as to when those under their care are feeling pain or not are astronomical - and it is exactly this type of ingenuity and foresight in medical innovation that should give us all hope for a brighter future moving forward for healthcare.
However, it starts with healthcare industry leaders such as Shirlee Sharkey loudly heralding the use of technology in medical innovation, as opposed to simply looking at it as simply a tool in the toolbox as it has historically been framed.
Shirlee Sharkey will be the keynote speaker at The 2011 itHealthcare Canada Conference and Exhibition, October 18-20, at the International Centre in Toronto - the theme is Enabling the Power of People and Creativity through Technology.
To find out more about the conference, visit www.ithealthcare.ca
