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Politics

Gingrich sees computers improving health care

By ALISA ULFERTS
Published April 14, 2007

TAMPA - If former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is right, this is what will happen in the not-so-distant-future of health care:

Your doctor will implant in you a wireless pacemaker that continuously monitors your heart waves. The data will be uploaded into a supercomputer that compares your heart rhythm with millions of others. Based on that, the computer will be able to diagnose a heart attack hours before it happens.

"You'll be at a ballgame and your cell phone will ring and it will be your pacemaker," Gingrich told participants Friday at the American Medical Association's medical communication conference in Tampa.

The automated voice on the phone will say you are three hours out from having a heart attack and an ambulance has already been dispatched to take you to the cardiac infarction prevention center, he said.

"You, being an American, will say, 'Three hours, huh? How about I wait until halftime,' " Gingrich said.

In the decade since his days as the architect of the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress and the resultant Contract with America, Gingrich has been busy writing books and talking up his ideas for revamping what he sees as a bloated medical bureaucracy, threatening to implode under the weight of its own inefficiency.

He founded the Center for Health Transformation in 2003 as a way to promote entrepreneurial solutions to health care problems, and in his speech to the AMA conferees he devoted much time to touting the benefits of an electronic medical records system.

That will cut down dramatically on prescription and hospital errors, Gingrich said.

Maryland surgeon Patricia Turner said she liked the sound of what Gingrich was saying, but she asked him how it would be practical for private practitioners or rural doctors, and how the doctor would be protected from liability in cases of computer glitch or error.

"These are things that are remarkable to talk about ... but how are physicians going to manage the data flow?" Turner asked.

Gingrich said computer systems would be tailored to various specialties, and that any time needed for the management of the new systems would come from time saved no longer handling cumbersome paperwork.

Gingrich also noted that major cultural changes will have to happen in order to save the American health care system, chief among them the turning back of childhood obesity. Major changes in the last 30 years - a reduced tolerance for smoking and drunken driving and laws requiring seat belt use - set the precedent for getting kids to slim down, he said.

"If you're not prepared to re-energize the individual, you can't fix the system," Gingrich said.

[Last modified April 14, 2007, 00:59:06]