Stubbendieck 1 Alex Stubbendieck 3 December 2011 Honors Biology-7 Technology in Todays Medical World Technology in medicine has changed

dramatically over the history of humans and in the last 50 years, medicine has increased the average life span from 31 years to about 67 years. Many advances have been made in medicine including the equipment used by modern doctors. Some of these advances are hand-washing testers, stethoscopes, blood pressure testing and many advances in hospital rooms. People did not begin to wash their hands until 150 years ago even though a Spanish physician named Rabbi Moses Maimonides had suggested it over 700 years before. In the 1840s, however, I.P. Semmelweis began to spread the word about hand washing and its benefits. Even though washing hands is thought to be widespread, it is accountable for 50% of all hospital-acquired infections each year-that is 50,000 deaths a year just from people forgetting to wash their hands. A new technology made to combat such a silly killer is called HyGreen. This machine is placed out side of hospital patients rooms and detects whether the doctor had washed his or her hands before entering the room; if the doctor does not wash his or her hands before, an alarm in the room goes off alerting the patient. When this machine was tested at Miami Childrens Hospital, hospital-acquired infections dropped 89%. Ren Laennec, a 17th century French physician was another founding father of medicine and invented a listening machine now known as the stethoscope. One day when he was examining an extremely obese woman he refused to check her heart rate because she smelled horrible. Instead of having to place his head against her body, he decided to roll a stack of paper into a tube and use it as a listening device. When he did

Stubbendieck 2 this, he noticed that it worked much better than the previous method and he did not have to place his head against patients bodies. Over time, this invention turned into the modern stethoscope. The most modern stethoscope now is the Littman 3200, a Bluetoothenabled stethoscope that sends the readings to the doctors computer. Checking blood pressure in patients is one way doctors are able to tell the patients overall health. In 1881, the first blood pressure recordings were taken, but it was only the systolic blood pressure. In 1905, the modern blood pressure testing was developed when Dr. Krotokoff found diastolic blood pressure. Another development in modern medicine is the Smart Room line by Cerner, a medical technology company. These rooms consist of everything necessary in normal hospital rooms, but integrated invisibly in the room. Some technology used in the room such as accelerometers, the same technology as iPhones, is used to monitor patients movements. These rooms also feature technology to make the room safer for the patients health. This technology is based on 5 steps to make it safer; the doctor first must login by scanning his or her I.D., then they must scan the patients barcode to identify the patient. After the first two steps are completed, the doctor must scan the barcode of the medication prescribed and then scan the pump where the vitals are monitored. The final step is to complete the documentation by double-checking the information scanned. This technology is used to make sure doctors follow all protocols and record all of the information. Overall medical technology has increased the standard of living in the world. The advances in medicine such as hand washing testers, stethoscopes, blood pressure testing methods, and advances in hospital rooms are only a few of the many technologies. With

Stubbendieck 3 these technologies, the standard of living has gone up dramatically and life expectancy has gone up over 35 years.