It took consuming citrus fruits for the prevention of scurvy 264 years from discovery to widespread adoption. Today, the time from discovery to implementation is estimated at 17 or 18 years. How much can we close this gap? In this video from FutureMed, medical futurist Dr. Michael Gillam explores this answer and where he expects us to be in 2025.
Watch for Dr. Gillam’s Dispatches From…Somewhere In The Future coming exclusively to MI2.org soon.
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Most people believe that Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb. This isn’t true, but for all practical purposes, it might as well be. While working electric light bulbs had been demonstrated as early as 1800 in laboratory conditions, Edison was the first to develop an electric light bulb that could be manufactured and operated efficiently enough to be attractive for municipalities, businesses and, later, families.
Very few football fans under the age of 60 can tell you who Pete Gogolak is, but when he stepped onto the field wearing a Buffalo Bills jersey in the autumn of 1964, he irrevocably changed the face of the game. He took a fairly mundane part of the game, the field goal, applied some old world logic, and voila, the wheels were set in motion that changed the way field goals would be kicked from there on out.
Faced with a common postoperative problem, preventing thromboemboli (blood clots) without using blood thinners, Dr. Lazar Greenfield had to look outside of healthcare for a solution. He considered filters, but the only filters used up until that time tended to create more problems than they solved. Flat screen filters would only add to venous obstruction and provide a nidus for more thrombus – creating a situation every bit as serious as the one it was intended to prevent.
So, where could Dr. Greenfield look to find a workable design for his intravenous filter?
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Sometimes the path is obvious… it’s an easy choice. After all, everyone’s heading that way. Well, sometimes, what you seek lies not in the obvious choice. Sometimes, it’s in the periphery. Let’s take a trip back to the mid 1800′s to meet California’s first millionaire.
During the Gold Rush of 1849, Sam Brannan earned his fortune, but not by panning for it in the American River…
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These days, there is hardly a household, business, or even computer screen that isn’t covered in some variation of those popular little yellow adhesive notes. How many households and businesses today would be shocked to know that the all-purpose Post-It® Note almost didn’t happen?
When Dr. Spencer Silver of the 3M Company accidentally discovered a new adhesive in 1968, he found it fascinating. It had an unusual structure that couldn’t be dissolved or melted. But because it was such a weak adhesive, it had no apparent use. After promoting it within the company for five years, he set it aside.
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