Are High-Tech Healthcare Solutions Worth the Price?

Robotics, protons and healthcare. While it may sound like something from a Star Trek marathon, I was actually reviewing some interesting healthcare news items this week that posed an intriguing question: Do we really know what we are paying for when it comes to high-tech healthcare solutions?

The first instance comes from the story on how hospitals--on their websites--appear to exaggerate the benefits of robotic surgery. Researchers at Johns Hopkins found that 41 percent of the 400 hospital websites they reviewed mentioned that they had robotic surgery.

Many times, the sites touted the advantages of robotic surgery over conventional surgery--such as less pain, shorter recovery, less scaring and less blood loss. But there is one big problem: these benefits have not been studied and verified through randomized controlled studies, the researchers said.