I was just in Las Vegas about two weeks ago for my birthday (and yes, I'm still accepting gifts). It's one of my favorite places to visit because, like one of my colleagues once said, it's an adult Disneyland. I came, I saw, I ate, and I gambled (for the curious readers, I prefer craps, blackjack, roulette, and sports). And the rest, well, you know what they say—what happens in Las Vegas...gets me off topic!
 
So back on track. The Consumer Electronics Show starts next week in Las Vegas. It's a pretty safe bet (no pun intended) that this show won't be on the calendar for many medtech companies, but there may be some worthwhile news coming out of it. For example, take a look at the Digital Health Summit, one of the conference tracks at the CES. It focuses on the booming consumer-based healthcare market (e.g., remote monitoring, telemedicine, etc.) and how it is subverting the traditional healthcare model.
 
The biggest news may come from AMD and Intel, which will debut combination chips that combine microprocessors (MCUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). Although such an advance could be—and is expected to be, according to many—a game-changer in the PC/computer industry, imagine what it could do in the medical device world. Combinining the two technologies into one chip 1) reduces the distance that electrical signals have to travel and speeds up some tasks 2) reduces the number of components needed to make computers work, which in turn shrinks production costs as well as the size of computers. Combination chips would allow lower-end devices to do things that are usually reserved for their fancier counterparts: playing high-definition movies, quickly converting audio and video files to different formats, etc. It may be a while before the technology crosses over into the healthcare space, but it will. Can you imagine some potential uses in your company's next medical device? —Lawrence Lloyd