Nine Technologies To Save Money For Our Health Care System

While far from a cure-all, technology will play an important role in health care reform
This sound-amplifying scope, our 2009 Best of What's New Grand Award winner, teams up with heart murmur-detecting software that can signal heart abnormalities or leaky valves. By allowing your everyday doc to better find murmurs, this scope could save $9.4 billion a year in unnecessary echocardiogram tests and cardiologist fees.

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For the past six months, fixing our flawed health care system has consumed our country’s politics. In the course of the debate (including the health care summit underway today), one of the few things that both sides can agree on is the potential for new technologies to improve the system. And while technology can never do the job on its own, the money-saving potential is vast. Here we’ve gathered the most promising devices and processes–ranging from simple tweaks of doctors’ most basic tools to advanced methods for drug production–that could save our bloated system billions.

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And embedded below, watch the health care summit live from Washington (10AM to 4PM EST, Thursday, February 25):