TED Community » Gregory Klopper

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  A reply on Conversation: What do you need more of to feel happy, secure and at peace?

  Jan 22 2012: Happy to have broken your wrist? :-) That's called "synthetic happiness". :-)

• A comment on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 19 2011: Sorry if I implied that it COMPLETELY doesn't happen. I meant to say that it doesn't happen enough. Paycheck is still king to many in this field, not service and compassion. Not for everyone, and I am grateful for that, but for many out there. Sorry if I was unclear.

• A reply on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 19 2011: I am really interested in your view and your argument. What is your own experience with insurance and regulatory costs that makes you disagree? I help design clinical trials and see the junction of costs in patient and investigator burden, molecule development, investigator grants, marketing, etc etc etc... Many of these costs arise from regulations which add highly superficial utility to the end-product, but are very costly. Many regulatory authorities require ALL questions answered in submissions, even mundane ones, which can take months to answer at $1-10 MILLION per day in lost pharma revenues due to limited age of patents for that time, which drives drug costs up to compensate. New submission process, new trial models, new data organization, AND NEW REGULATION STRUCTURE would be a huge headway to lower costs, even if you're right about insurance costs, and I'm somehow just not seeing them to be as much of a contributor to the bottom line as Reg.

• A reply on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 19 2011: Actually, single largest contributor to high cost of health care are costs of clinical trials and regulatory approval process. Inefficient FDA is why costs are high, not nearly as much due to insurance firms.

• A reply on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 19 2011: I don't know if we will ever get to a world where compassionate people work in position where compassion is required the most. It is a sad reality we're not there today. But many things you described will rapidly change with modern technologies. Inexpensive exo-skeletons for disabled and elderly, which enable walking. New biologic treatments for weight control, labs/tests done by a portable device or a mobile phone even, where no appointment would be necessary, or routine visits for a chat with doctor, which can happen online, without having to be there. There's hope that most people will be less disabled by their "disabilities".

• A reply on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 19 2011: I wonder if at the moment Insurance is given such an important role because it offers the necessary effectiveness metrics for treatment. Metrics drive innovation, insurance companies and consortiums drive metrics. I'd be nowhere in my team's innovation without ICD-9, but coding today is done mostly for billing purposes, driven again by insurance companies. And this is just one example.
  
  Also we have to consider the economic value of stability. Paying more is not always bad. You don't just pay tfor treatment, you pay for the safety net that WHILE you're getting your treatment, chronic or not, any sudden hikes in costs or changes in standard of care, or acute incidents, and incedental trauma will not take unexpected $20,000 out of your pocket, derailing your entire financial life (thinking of average americans here).
  
  I'm not saying insurance today isn't flawed throughout. I am FAR FROM defending today's model, but it's not just something that you deprioritize or think of ways to get rid of. I think it's something which needs re-design, but should always be a part of the system when considering the holistic "health CARE", not just incedental medical treatments. And it should reward behaviors such as healthy diets, supplementation, and exercise or active lifestyle, which should become increasingly easy in the world of Big Data.

• A comment on Conversation: Asteroid Strike against Earth: Would an explosion in space, even a nuclear one, behave as they do on Earth?

  Sep 21 2011: Not all fires burn due to "air" - gas form of oxygen. Oxidizers can be pre-packaged into an explosive - e.g. gun bullets. Just drop some Lithium or Sodium or Cesium into water. You've never seen water burn so bright. :-) My guess is that depending on the type of the matter we're attacking, we can find explosions which work together with the matter in the stellar body to destroy it. You get to more of an issue with soft-bodies commets, which are just a gravity-held bulk of dust, ice, small rocks, etc, and not what we define as a solid rock. Smaller explosions would just be absorbed into the flacid structure.
  
  I would be interested to hear answers from chemists and physicists out there on specific reactions which can create enough matter propulsion to "space shock waves". You can also always drill the explosive into the rock before you blow it. :-) Heat and expand the matter itself, not air around it. Fill the drilled with water, or something denser.

• A reply on Conversation: Instead of narrow specialization, how can our educational system better train integrative, innovative, and adaptive problem solvers?

  Sep 21 2011: http://www.amazon.com/Five-Minds-Future-Howard-Gardner/dp/1422145352

• A reply on Conversation: Instead of narrow specialization, how can our educational system better train integrative, innovative, and adaptive problem solvers?

  Sep 21 2011: Read something (anything) by Ray Kurzweil to get an idea of how to answer this question. :-) Consider exponential growth of technological power and adaptation in our society. What does the world look like in 10 years with near-free internet in central africa and middle east... cheap smart 4G-5G phones which have the processing power of today's most expensive off-the-shelf desktops in hands of people we don't associate with tech users. ubiquitous translation, advanced medical diagnosis and personalized treatment, augmented human parts (exo- and endo-), wider adoption of 3D printing tech... What are the jobs in this world? CONNECTORS! People who understand meaning in multiple fields and know how to solve problems without a concrete specification, as well as scientific jobs that enable the underlying tech: biologists, data miners, AI engineers, social engineers, new breed of leadership which works laterally across social groups and skill sets, not hierarchically in order of line management and reporting.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: Instead of narrow specialization, how can our educational system better train integrative, innovative, and adaptive problem solvers?

  Sep 21 2011: I think what Khan Academy is doing, along with MIT OpenCourseware, Stanford OpenClassroom and Engineering Everywhere, and others surely to follow - this is the way to learn. But Khan Academy and others only work if you realized you NEED the material or for some reason want to learn it, and you know specifically what to look for. Creating interest in new material and exposing students to subjects they didn't know they should have - that's also a major role of educators, which the internet is missing thus far. As well as a human touch, which should never become absent from the learning experience.
  
  I *LOVE* what Stanford is doing this year with live web enrollment to a live class - homeworks and all.