"Statin use will see some major changes when Zocor becomes generic," he says. A generic version of the cholesterol-lowering statin drug, Zocor, is slated to become available beginning midyear.

"We are undertreating high cholesterol and underprescribing cholesterol medications and people are not persistent with staying on their medication. But increased availability with a generic will help turn that around." Statins are the most effective class of drugs for lowering cholesterol.

Computerizing Health Records

After Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, most of the 1 million people displaced by the storm were left with no medical records -- making it difficult, if not impossible, to treat them. As a result, there has been a renewed interest in electronic medical records.

"We will see an uptick in physician office adoption of electronic medical records in 2006 --particularly in large group practices," says J. Marc Overhage, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

"There will be a rocky road in smaller practices of less than five people because there are not good models at that scale." But don't worry, those walls of paper records and files we have all grown so accustomed to will not disappear in 2006. "The files won't be gone, but we will see some diminution."

Diet and Exercise

It's back. The South Beach diet, that is, with a new dining guide to help consumers stick to their low-carb lifestyle while dining out as well as an emphasis on core training and functional fitness.

"I really think that is where fitness should be - engaging the core muscles and doing fitness that correlates more with everyday life," says father of the South Beach diet and cardiologist Arthur Agaston, MD, director of the Mount Sinai Cardiac Prevention Center in Miami Beach, Fla.

What's more, regardless of which diet you buy into, everyone will finally be on the same page about what constitutes a healthy diet and what does not in 2006, he predicts. There will be a move away from draconian, fad diets that demonize a single nutrient and canonize another. Instead, diets will emphasize whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and lean sources of protein, he says. "There will be a move toward good carbs and nutritionally dense carbs like pomegranates, blueberries, and strawberries," he says.

Shoppers will also see heart-damaging trans fats listed on labels in 2006 as per an FDA mandate. Trans fatty acids or trans fats are formed when manufacturers turn liquid oils into solid fats. Manufacturers create trans fats via a process called hydrogenation. As a result of the new labels, "it will become easier and easier to avoid trans fats and fried foods and to make healthy choices," he says.

Medicare Part D

January 2006 marks the beginning of the new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan.

"First we will see apathy because the materials sent out were complex," predicts Nan Andrews Amish, MBA, a San Francisco-based health care consultant.

"So, when seniors cannot make sense of the ... brochures, they will finally be motivated to action in March or April. Then we will see a mad rush by insurers to get people enrolled," she says.

"Meanwhile, doctors will then have to work with Medicare formulary lists to get seniors alternative prescriptions when their's is not covered [and] most chronically ill seniors will hit the donut hole," (or the lack of coverage for drug spending between $2,251 and $5,100), she says.

"Seniors will come in expecting their drugs to be paid for and be told they owe an amount larger than expected," she says. "In short, we get chaos."

The Booming Baby Business

The year 2006 may enable the stork to make even more house calls, thanks to advances in assisted reproductive technology, says Lawrence Werlin, MD, the medical director of Coastal Fertility Medical Center in Irvine, Calif.

"We will see a push toward freezing eggs, lowering multiple gestations and a push toward preimplantation genetics," he predicts. Freezing eggs has gotten a lot of play in the media lately.

As technology improves and we are able to freeze and thaw eggs better, this may become an option for women who are young, but don't want to achieve pregnancy right now because they want to pursue a career, don't have a partner, or may be undergoing cancer treatment that will damage their ovaries, he predicts.

Preimplantation genetics allows doctors to look at an embryo before implantation to determine if it's healthy from a genetic and disease standpoint, thus reducing risk of abnormalities in the fetus. Preimplantation genetics will also reduce multiple-baby pregnancies because doctors can implant two or fewer viable embryos. "This will help ensure pregnancy success while reducing multifetal pregnancies."

Nip and Tucking in the New Year

"We will still continue to see an increase in surgical and nonsurgical cosmetic procedures," predicts Mark L. Jewell, MD, a plastic surgeon in Eugene, Ore., and the president of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

"Wrinkle fillers and Botox will continue to be widely utilized and new players will enter the market," he says. "We will see the approval of a silicone breast implant in the first quarter of 2006," he says. Once approved, these implants, due largely to their more natural feel and appearance, will dominate the U.S. market.

We will increasingly be doing the same thing on the body as we have been on the face, predicts Neil Sadick, MD, a dermatologist in private practice in New York City.

For example, more and more people will undergo procedures to erase the signs of aging on their hands. Another big area will be anticellulite technologies that really work, he says.

At the end of 2005, the first face transplant made headlines and we may be hearing more about such transplants in the coming year, Jewell says. The Cleveland Clinic is slated to do the first face transplant in the U.S. "This is certainly a wonderful opportunity to restore a person's life when their face is so deformed by an accident or horrific circumstances," Jewell says.