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A Brief History of Health Technology

Egyptian toe prosthetics

An early version of the

stethoscope

First medical X-ray

In the very broadest sense, the history of medical and health

technology is anything but brief. In fact, it was recently confirmed

that the world’s oldest prosthetic devices were Egyptian wooden

and leather toes that dated back to as early as 950 BC! And, as a

senior editor for the blog Medgadget, it’s my mission to chronicle

the latest health technology, which has included a whopping

12,000 news pieces and counting in just eight years!

While there’s a lot of significant events in the history of medical

technology, I thought I’d attempt to share a few that I think are not

only meaningful, but also interesting.

1816 – Doctor René Laennec develops stethoscope out of respect for

women: French physician René Laennec is a true gentleman and the

quintessential engineer. When attempting to diagnose a patient with a heart

condition, he applied his basic knowledge of acoustics, rolling up a newspaper

and placing in on the patient’s chest. This early stethoscope allowed Laennec

to much more clearly hear the heart sounds of the patient. It also allowed him

to maintain his dignity, as the patient was a woman, and placing his ear on her

bare chest was considered immodest.

1895 – William Röntgen “accidentally” discovers

that X-rays are medically useful: It’s said that one

day, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen was playing

around with cathode tubes when he observed that a

nearby fluorescent screen was being illuminated by invisible rays (which he

coined “Röntgen rays” at first) that could pass through different materials. He

didn’t realize the real practicality of them, however, until he made a picture of

his wife’s hand using X-rays and a photographic plate. Fortunately,

Frau Röntgen didn’t turn into the Hulk, but her bony left hand and wedding

band become a part of the very first X-ray photograph of a human body part,

to which she exclaimed “I have seen my death!”

late 1940′s – Transistors pave the way for faster computers and smaller

implants: The development of the transistor is usually credited to a trio of researchers from Bell Labs

and is a key component in virtually every electronic device. It was because of the advancement of the

transistor that many medical devices that were once impractical to use because of their size and power

requirements are even taken for granted. The implantable pacemaker, a commonplace, lifesaving

device, has benefited much from transistor technology, and has shrunk over the years to

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First transistor

Jarvik-7 artificial heart

a minuscule 20 millimeters. You can also thank the exponential

advancement of the transistor (a phenomenon known as “Moore’sLaw”) for “forcing” you to buy a new iPhone every year.

1956 – Thanks to dummies, a

patent is issued for the first

artificial, mechanical heart: While

the Jarvik-7 and its successors arethe most well-known artificialhearts, it wasn’t the first to be

patented. One day at Montefiore Hospital in New York, Dr. HenryHeimlich (the creator of the Heimlich Maneuver/abdominal thrusts)invited his friend Paul Winchell to observe an open-heart surgery. Afterwatching the patient expire during the surgery, he used his knowledgeof dummies to come up with the concept of the artificial heart. Youlikely know Winchell as a popular ventriloquist and the voice of Tigger.(Fun fact: Winchell became friends with Heimlich after beating RicardoMontalban in a televised dance competition, which led to the dinner where Winchell and Heimlichwould first meet). To this day, a completely implantable artificial heart remains one of the holy grails ofmedical engineering.

1980 – The World Wide Web is created, soon evolving to include videos of cats, tweets, and Rock

Health ideas: Over at CERN in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee created the first “website”, which was a

personal database of people and software models. Since that first website debuted, technology hasadvanced and the web has grown to include information of all sorts, from the completely bizarre to

the infinitely useful. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is its aim to present information and

connect people. The era of digital health owes much to the rise of the internet, as popular health sitessuch as WebMD would not be in existence without it. Many of our current class and alumni companies

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The human genome, hardcover edition

also utilize the latest in web technologies in the same way: presenting useful information to doctorsand their patients, and connecting them together to live better lives.

2000 – The Human Genome Project accelerates the rise in

personalized medicine: In a collaboration between the

U.S. Department of Energy, the National Institute of Health,and numerous other research institutions, the HGP soughtto identify the 25,000 genes of a human genome. One ofthe many applications of this massive project, which arestill being explored 13 years later, include a morecomprehensive, genetic understanding of disease whichcan lead to a more individualized treatment of patients.

If you’re interested in more health tech history, check out this

timeline of health technologies from the National Academy

of Engineering. Also, be sure to check out Medgadget’s

archives of medical lore from “the good old days”.

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TEDMEDFrom the stethoscope to the deciphering the human genome: Major health tech innovationsthroughout history.Reply · · Like · Follow Post · December 27, 2012 at 9:48am10

CareSimpleThe wonderful thing about Tigger is...Tigger conceptualized the artificial heart! Who knew?Reply · Like · Follow Post · January 7 at 9:01am

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