Versicherungsmedizin / herausgegeben von Verband der Lebensversicherungs-Unternehmen e.V. und Verband der Privaten Krankenversicherung e.V
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Ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies are mainly developed to support elderly people in their own homes and facilitate a longer, self-determined life. In addition to providing a demographic prognosis for Germany, the present publication includes the definition, classification and current market situation of AAL. Lastly, the benefit of AAL technologies to the insurance industry and the subsequent steps to be taken are addressed.
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Currently, there is considerable interest in telemedicine for two reasons: Firstly, it is expected to bring improvements in health care. Secondly, it is assumed that telemedicine reduces health care costs. The latter is of particular importance because health care costs are expected to rise considerably in the future. The present article describes the current situation of telemedicine in Germany.
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Versicherungsmedizin · Dec 2011
Review[From guilt and shame to professional handling of mistakes--risk management in surgical medicine].
Medical advances in diagnosis and therapy, especially in medical technology, lead to differenciated and more complex strategies in therapy with higher risks. Patients show higher expectations concerning the results of a therapy and claim more often that a mistake in treatment has been made. This makes patients turn to arbitration boards more often. ⋯ Risk management in medical treatment must be more than just a trendy word, because its roots are in the medical principles of "primum nihil nocere". It is a challenge to today's and tomorrow's medicine. This article is a general overview of current strategies for avoiding mistakes: It is meant to be the basis of a new culture of mistake avoidance as a part of a future quality competition.
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Versicherungsmedizin · Sep 2006
Review[COPD--chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and its implications for the human organism].
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) belongs next to bronchial asthma to the most important diseases of the respiratory tract in terms of its socio-economic impact. Especially exacerbations of COPD and clinical end-stages exert extremely negative effects on the global burden of disease. This article analyses current aspects of COPD regarding epidemiology, pathogenesis, pathophysiology and diagnosis of the disease. Given the estimation that COPD will be the third most common cause of death in the year 2020, the high socio-economic costs and the primary cause tobacco smoke exposure, the disease can be regarded as extremely relevant for numerous aspects of insurance medicine.