Technology, lifestyle diseases and economic burden
Author: Vinod Singh – Department of Zoology, University of Lucknow, India
Co-authors:
- Sanjeev Kumar – Department of Economics, University of Lucknow, India
- Shalie Malik – Department of Zoology, University of Lucknow, India
- Seema Singh – Department of Zoology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow 226007, India, India
The PCST2020 theme Time, Technology or Transformation is quite relevant in today’s technology driven life.
The role of technology in improving our lifestyle and wellbeing is undeniable. It provides us socio-economic benefits, but can pose a serious challenge to our environment and health, thereby affect our financial future.
The technology has made our life comfortable but simultaneously given ‘lifestyle diseases’ such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, along with depression, anxiety, and sleep and mood disorders. These disorders are chronic and progress slowly, and have a high cost of treatment e.g. in US, the yearly expenditures for diabetes and obesity cure are $237 and $147 billion respectively and cost of cancer care is expected to reach almost $174 billion by 2020. In Australia, the itemized expenses may be $330 million for heart disease, $92 million for strokes, $87 million for hypertension, almost $40 million for obesity, and $35 million for type 2 diabetes. India is also not far behind, as WHO report projects that lifestyle disorders will cost India $6 trillion by 2030, nearly nine times higher than the total health expenditure.
The economic burden of these diseases is seen at all levels; individual, family, society, community and the country. The key issue is to maximize the benefits of technology, and adopt a healthy lifestyle. Therefore we need to review the tradeoff between technology dependent health status and economic burden through well-developed links between research, policy, and practice and give a balanced opinion.
In the present poster, therefore, we intend to show the possible reason for rise in cases of lifestyle disorders, its impact on work performance and on economy of a country. This will open the avenues to search for the appropriate plans encompassing technology, health and economy.
The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.
Presentation type: Visual presentation
Theme: Technology