The Medical Moore's Law

One of the interesting tidbits I took away from the Adobe Engage summit was how the medical technology market is becoming a key area of focus. Two of the nine companies that Adobe brought in to show off the power of their new tools were involved in the medical area. Acesis is building tools for point-of-care data capture; B-Line Medical is building tools for medical simulation and training. (James Governor has a good post about the Acesis presentation.)

The shift of developer attention to the medical industry seems to be in the water these days. I was talking to Peter Bloom, managing partner at General Atlantic Partners and former CTO of Salomon Brothers, about Web 2.0 in the financial industry, but what made him really excited was his volunteer work with the Cancer Research Institute and his brother's work with remote robotic surgery. [video link]

Similarly, I was talking recently to Andy Kessler, who is best known for his insightful books about Wall Street, with a focus on the interplay between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. He pointed out that his attention is shifting from the traditional technology industry to medicine. His latest book is entitled The End of Medicine. His premise is that the sensor revolution and Moore's law applied to computerized medical diagnostics will lead to a new era of early detection and preventive medicine. (Andy's blog has a great email exchange with Milton Friedman about why Milton doesn't buy Andy's premise that technology advances will save the medical industry. But that's another post...)