High Tech vs Low Tech: Which is better?
I was sitting in a lunch conference at work this week and the speaker was explaining Smart certification for green building materials when he inferred that high technology was not always better that “low technology”. To paraphrase his story, he said something to the effect of: “Maintenance people always think that if you don’t need gloves and a mask to handle the cleaning products, then they aren’t strong enough!” William McDonough, author of Cradle to Cradle, would agree that this statement exemplifies the paradigm that society believes that more complex things are better that simple things.
While high technology is often equated with progress, it is also often accessible and understood by few. On the other hand, low technology, which is associated with the past tense, is often accessible and operable by the masses.
Think about LEED buildings how they integrate complex ventilation systems and materials that don’t off-gas with the goal of a certain level of indoor air quality. As a future LEED Green Associate, I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but you will most likely be getting better air quality if you go camping for the weekend. I should add that tents are still used by many populations as a primary settlement and generally without any concerns for indoor air quality.
Simple, “low tech” is more sustainable because it can be used and understood by the masses.
This statement cannot be more true that in the medical industry. Medical technology is understood by select few in this industry and as a result, patients must rely on professionals to operate the technology, creating a huge bottleneck in the healthcare industry.
What if this bottleneck could be widened? What if patients had access to simple tools that would empower them to take on greater roles in the management of their own health?
A Washington-based start-up called NudgeRx is using simple technology: a text message to make waves in the healthcare industry by improving patient adherence to hospital discharge plans.
This is great, but it needs to be scaled up!
In his keynote address at the Digital Health Summit in January 2012, Dr Reed Tuckson said: “One of the most important areas is remote monitoring. If we can get people out of the highest cost centers, and get them out into lower cost centers. And be able to do that work with less skilled, less expensive personnel… [This is] exceedingly important for the future, not only for the healthcare of America but for the economic survivability of America.”
Shifting a portion the power from the healthcare professionals to the patients and their support networks by using simple, easy to use technology is a founding principle behind Citizen Impulse as we believe it is the necessary redesign of the healthcare industry to ensure its viability.
Stay tuned at http://citizenimpulse.wordpress.com/ !
Let me know what you think!
SELECTED THOUGHTS - Anne-Marie Paquette 
Hey Anne,
Amazing thoughts. I’d like to also share my POV on this, High Tech of today would eventually become Low Tech of tomorrow and Low Tech of today was once a High Tech. Isn’t it so?
True it is, Low tech is accessible and available to the masses. But it doesn’t necessarily be a radio, does it? We call something Low Tech in comparison to something very advanced. But in it’s entirety, Low Tech (or as we call it) can do some amazing stuff! 🙂
Regards,
Jyothi
Hi Jyothi,
I completely agree that the things we call Low Tech are often relative to the things that are considered High tech within the same space.
What I would call into questions is the blind favoring of the latter.
It does have to be a radio, but think of something that everyone (or almost) has… a mobile phone. Now today’s smartphones are more high-tech than the cells phones that were one the market 5 years ago. But, if you think of your phone within the context of the medical industry, it is drastically low tech compared to all the hardware and robotics you would find in a typical hospital or clinic today.
I see the future of consumer healthcare as leveraging the simple technology that everyone has access to such as their mobile device to improve healthcare services worldwide.
Thanx for your comment! Would love to continue the discussion.
Cheers,
AM
Anne,
True, and thanks for aligning me to your thoughts! Blind favouring is always a deter to growth and more importantly reach. Yes, I agree a lot to that.
We may use the cutting edge technology in the industry, but unless we use the more popular low-tech – we can hardly reach out to the mass of the consumers and serve them better! Right?
The example you quoted earlier, regarding the discharge plans – was great. Switching to understandable tech, healthcare can become accessible and simpler to the masses. There’s a lot of scope to improve and contribute to consumer healthcare in this line, isn’t there?
Regards,
Jyothi
Great post, and Also the picture was a good choice! 🙂