Digital Upgrades: Applying Moore's Law to Health. We chose this year’s theme to acknowledge that virtual reality, as an aid to medical diagnosis and therapy, is now being validated by clinical experience. No longer merely conjectural or start-up, is well on its way to becoming routine.

In a half-humorous way, “Digital Upgrades” refers to upgrading our bodies the way we now upgrade software. Now the stuff of science fiction, personal health augmentation devices and programs will become, we predict, commonplace tools in the future. Already, networks connecting physicians, patients, and data are upgrading our methods of care. Sensors and microdevices, constantly improving, will become eyes, ears, fingers, noses, and tongues for these networks.

The doubling of efficiency and capability that Moore's Law describes does not directly apply to healthcare, as Richard Robb explains in his paper. However, we can expect accelerating progress as the utility of imaging, robotics, and informatics is demonstrated in the doctor's office and hospital. Kirby Vosburgh and Ronald Newbower examine how information technology already assists clinical care, and they address the barriers that discourage physicians and the healthcare industry from adopting novel tools and methods. What’s noteworthy to us is that ordinary patients now benefit from the research shared at MMVR over the past ten years. Inevitably, continuing technological leaps and refinements will merge electronic tools with our bodies in ways we can now only imagine.

MMVR02/10 takes place in the wake of September 11, 2001, and we believe there is a relationship between that day's events and what this conference is for. On that morning, it became clear why healthcare should be transformed along the lines of Moore's Law. September 11 taught us that data has become the most critical political and economic resource, that which determines the power of nations. To address some particular fears, the United States and other wealthy nations are confronting the urgent need for improved dataintensive biomedical tools. For all its agonies, war does stimulate medical progress. We're sure to see increased government and private investment in electronic aids to medical training, surgery, telemedicine, data networks, and sensors — what MMVR is all about. Our ability to defend ourselves depends upon this investment.

On the preventive side of conflict, if medical excellence were to proliferate the way cellular phones, personal computers, and the internet have, then the inequality — generally, as well as in healthcare — between rich and poor nations would diminish. (And inequality will increasingly deter peace because global communications are making disparities between nations more obvious.) Although we can’t replicate healthcare workers like we can computer chips, the ever cheaper production of health-supporting technology — per Moore’s Law — would make medical care better and more available in the developing world. Healthier, more valuable individual lives will add up to a more peaceful world.

This volume is the product of the tenth annual Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference. Noting this special anniversary, we wish to thank the hundreds of researchers who, during the past decade, have shared their knowledge and vision and made MMVR a tool for giving better health to all."