Moore's law is elegant in its simplicity  -  and world-changing in its significance. And, as hard as it might have been to believe when Intel co-founder Gordon Moore posited it back in 1965, it has more or less held true for the half-century since.

The maxim  -  that the number of transistors able to fit on an integrated circuit will double roughly every 18 to 24 months  -  has had a profound effect on technology, with speed and computing power increasing (and size and cost decreasing), as the calendar pages flip forward.

Healthcare, of course, has been notoriously slow to adopt technology on a wide scale. But now that the industry has taken to IT in earnest, it's natural to get excited  -  perhaps sometimes overexcited  -  about what the future might hold.

If that idea, of effectiveness and efficiency on the uptick even as cost of doing business goes down, works for technology, well, now that healthcare is making smart use of technology, shouldn't it work for healthcare too? 

Writing in WIRED magazine this past October, Moore's Intel colleague Andy Grove celebrated the fact that the past few decades have been transformed by "major strides in technology" in myriad different industries. "Improvements in semiconductors have allowed faster computation and communications, as well as the construction of databases that outdo themselves every year."

In the same article, he criticized a healthcare industry where "1950s-era thinking still rules the day." Clearly, we have some catching up to do. 

Mr. Chips

Now, Moore's Law can't hold true forever. Even back in 2007, former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett was conceding that "we are getting to the fundamental physical limitations" of chip architecture.

"The laws of physics are to blame," explains Gery Menegaz, executive IT architect for Intel's rival IBM, writing on ZDNet. "The current process allows us to create chips with transistors that are measured in atoms. Eventually, or in about 2020, transistors will become so small that quantum theory or atomic physics will take over and electrons will begin to leak out of the wires."

In the seven years between now and then, could healthcare ever hope to harness technology to the point where it doubles its advantages and halves its hindrances three, even four times? Could we ever expect to see such exponential improvements in quality, cost and access? Or should we be happy merely to move past the Eisenhower-era doldrums in which Grove accused the industry of wallowing?

Some within Intel's ranks see a slightly different twist on the application of Moore's Law. This past summer, Mark Blatt, MD, the firm's worldwide medical director, told Intel Free Press about his theory of "Moore's Law for Healthcare"  -  a better way of expanding patient access.