Joe
Coughlin
delivers
Massachusetts General Hospital Grand
Rounds lecture on aging, technology
and health systems innovation
May
5, 2008
Dr.
Joe Coughlin, ESD Senior Lecturer
and Director of the AgeLab,
was the featured speaker at the Massachusetts
General Hospital’s Grand Rounds.
Grand Rounds invites the hospital’s
clinician and research community to
lectures covering issues of critical
interest in the science and practice
of healthcare.
Dr.
Coughlin’s talk, entitled –
New Technology & Old Age:
Innovating the Future of Healthy Aging
addressed the implications of demographic
change and new technology on how the
healthcare system will care for the
health and wellness of an aging society.
His talk identified several key drivers
of systems change including a new
wave of older, yet empowered, health
consumers; the emergence of new non-traditional
health services providers; and, the
application of ubiquitous computing
to enable ubiquitous health services.
Dr. Coughlin forecasted that these
factors, as well as a dynamic public
policy environment, will exact profound
change on hospitals and general practitioners
– transforming many hospitals
into clearinghouses of systems information
and today’s general practitioner
into services consultants for older
patients and caregivers.
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