Societal Impact Assessment

Roughly thirteen percent of the United States GNP is associated with the healthcare industry. While this impressive number has contributed tremendous revenues to our economy and offered advanced healthcare that is the envy of the world, the benefits are not uniformly shared by all our citizens. A major reason for this is that with technological advances in diagnostic equipment come increased costs. For the most part, large metropolitan cities can afford to offer these services but rural areas struggle. This disparity forces many people to drive hours to obtain the same quality healthcare those who live in larger cities take for granted. Unfortunately, many people who live in these rural areas choose not to go to the large centers of care and instead receive substandard care. Worse yet, many poorer countries virtually have no access to these advanced medical technologies putting their citizens are higher risks. Another problem with the current diagnostic equipment is that they are close to impossible to transport from a hospital in a large city to any rural or third-world country. Imagine trying to take apart and unwire a machine with hundreds of wires and cords to transport it somewhere. Or better yet trying to hook it back up again once it is transported somewhere. This poses major problems for a patient who needs the care immediately. One of the reasons that healthcare providers can charge so much for their services is due to supply and demand. These large companies in major cities have the money to buy the expensive diagnostics equipment and can therefore charge what they choose because patients do not have a choice on weather or not they want the treatment in most cases. If advanced diagnostic equipment was easily transportable the cost would certainly decrease tremendously.

The issue of affordable healthcare is complex, but one of the major contributors is the cost of advanced diagnostic equipment. IMDT was founded on the principle that medical technology can and should be made affordable. It is not that other companies are necessarily gouging the market, although that certainly does occur at times, it is simply that medical device companies are not taking advantage of mass produced off the shelf technologies that already exist. By combining proprietary diagnostic technologies with affordable personal computers, which a lot of people already have, advanced diagnostic technologies can be offered to rural areas and underdeveloped countries at an affordable price. Providing this information to the rural healthcare worker can and will have a significant impact on the quality of healthcare offered to all citizens across our country and the world.