But it was just a few years after that medicine began to change dramatically—yet none of her doctors had seen this revolution coming. And these were top doctors working out of big name facilities: Harvard’s Mass General, Boston’s Children’s Hospital, Dartmouth’s Hitchcock, etc.
If they had been atop the cutting-edge trends in their fields, they would have known, for example, about the advent and widespread adoption of laparoscopic surgery—a procedure that would have reduced five of her surgeries into one. Nor did her doctors know about new treatments in the pipeline—like the discovery of Tumor Necrosis factor, which would soon lead to an entirely new class of drugs that would have put her into remission, completely eradicating the need for surgery.
Not one of her doctors had told her, “technology is hope,” and there’s no need for you to lose a three major organs.
It was for exactly this reason that Robin has dedicated much of her adult life to remedying this issue. She is the VP of Strategic Relations for Singularity University and Founding Executive Producer for Exponential Medicine (formerly FutureMed), a conference specifically devoted to educating physicians, healthcare execs, and investors about the opportunities and disruptions exponentially growing technology is bringing to the healthcare and medical field.
And Robin and I have teamed up to bring you a little of that hard-won knowledge. Below you’ll find a list of five technologies that are currently advancing exponentially, all of which have the power to reshape healthcare as we know it. In other words, for the long suffering, there is plenty of hope to go around.
3-D Printing:
3D printing is already making its presence felt in medical device world. Ninety-five percent of all hearing aids are today 3D printed. Align Technology prints 650,000 pairs of Invisilign teeth-straightening braces a day. This tech is also pushing into prosthetics. A month back, this blog reported on a father borrowing a 3D printer from a local school to make a functioning prosthetic hand for his son. There are also custom-made back braces for scoliosis patients and casts for broken bones (perforated with holes so people can finally scratch through their casts) and, in the latest development, 3D printed facial prosthetics (noses, ears, etc.).
The biggest news is in organ printing. While the bioprinting of whole organs is still a little ways off, already Organovo, a California-based research company, has printed human liver tissue for drug toxicity testing purposes. And once we’re capable of whole organ printing, dying patients will no longer suffer an interminable wait while they discover if they’ve been selected to receive a life-saving organ. Instead, soon, we’ll be able to make organs from our own stem cells and replace them when needed, and all without the fear of rejection or lifelong dependence on harsh drugs.
Artificial Intelligence:
It started with IBM’s Watson. After besting humans on Jeopardy back in 2011, Big Blue sent their thinking machine to medical school. Now loaded up with everything from journal articles to medical textbooks to actual information culled from patient interviews, the supercomputer has remerged as an incredibly robust diagnostic aid that is already being used for everything from training medical students to managing the treatment of lung cancer.
And Watson’s not the only entrant into the field. The London-based Isabel Healthcare has just released their own AI-based diagnostic tool—as an app. What began as diagnostic decision support engine for doctors was just made available to consumers for free via a smartphone.
Of course, this is only the beginning. Pretty soon we’ll all have access to supercomputers capable of evaluating and analyzing a blistering array of data—all your current symptoms, biometric data, environmental data and personal data (i.e. diet and activity level) and your entire genome. Imagine what this will do for quality of care.
Brain-Computer Interfaces:
We’ve been hearing about BCIs for a little while now. The tech originated out of the desire to help paraplegics and quadriplegics control computer cursors with only their brains. Of course, these developments will continue apace, bringing far more liberation to the disabled then ever before possible, but the bigger news is in BCIs that can control robotic limbs or even restore function to paralyzed limbs.
These devices are also starting to make their way into the consumer realm. Today, companies like Muse and NeuroSky make a wireless BCI headsets that can monitor changes in brainwave activity and help people train concentration. Eventually, the hope is that such wearable tech will be used in the treatment of Alzheimers, pain management and well, it’s hard to say. Point of fact: Harvard University researchers recently created the first brain-to-brain interface, allowing a researcher to control both a rat’s tail and another human’s movements with his mind.
Robotics:
The robots are coming, the robots are coming, the robots are, well, here. Whether we’re talking the da Vinci Surgical System—which has performed over 20,000 operations since its 2000 debut—or newer developments like the nanobots swimming through our bloodstream and scraping plaque from our arteries, robots are already deep into the healthcare space.
This trend will only continue. Service robots are expected to enter the healthcare sector early next year, doing everything from distributing patient meds to picking up dirty laundry. And, as many of these service bots are able to do the work of three humans for the cost of less than one, no doubt they’ll be spreading quickly as well.
Finally, exoskeletons—which are sort of external strap on robots—are now market ready. In February of 2012, Ekso Bionics introduced the first commercialized robotic exoskeleton that allows paraplegics to stand and walk independently. By December 2012, over 1 million steps had been taken by patients wearing the their devices—that’s a million steps that were never before possible. And this too is merely the beginning. For example, iWalk, the makers of the BIOM (the world’s first bionic prosthetic), have promised to bring an exoskeleton based on that design to consumers by 2015.
Point-of-Care Diagnostics.
In medicine, one of the major promises of technology is patient empowerment—especially when it comes to diagnostics. The XPRIZE Tricorder Challenge is a $10 million incentivized prize for the development of a hand-held, non-invasive electronic device that can diagnose patients better than a panel of doctors. Think of it as a combination of a Lab-on-a-Chip and a Watson or Isabel-like AI in the cloud. Suddenly, patients no longer have to go to the doctor’s office or hospital. Instead, in the comfort of your home, the Tricorder will analyze data, diagnose the problem, and send that information to a doctor who, quite possibly, can treat you remotely. In the developed world, where doctors make diagnostic errors 10 percent of the time, this will make a significant difference in quality-of-care and significantly reduce the roughly $55 billion spent annually on the malpractice system) In the developing world, this will make healthcare far more accessible.
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