Different forms of medical screening have made it possible for doctors to detect anomalies in patients sooner. That preemptive detection saves lives, but those scanners are not the most important cutting-edge technologies expected to aid the medical profession. Read on for some ideas that doctors hope will truly change the future.
Personalized Medicine
Breakthroughs in health information technology, combined with actual improvements in how we treat disease, will lead to personalized medicine. Eventually, researchers hope that they can craft drugs that target specific issues in the body that cause disease. Bio-medical researchers are already flirting with these ideas, using RNA to inhibit or increase the growth of certain cells.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology has the potential to completely change health care at a molecular level. Researchers hope that this technology will be able to target and monitor parts of the body. This might help diabetics maintain healthy glucose levels, or prevent cancer from spreading to parts of a patient’s body.
Brain-Machine Interfacing
Based on research first hypothesized in video games, BMI will connect a patient’s brain to prosthetics. This technology creates a direct pathway to an external device, so a user can actually “use” the fingers of a prosthetic hand, or bend a prosthetic limb the way someone with normal limbs would.
Conclusions
Medicine and technology have finally caught up to one another. Patients will benefit from treatments that better target the ailment, without damaging the patient. Doctors will be able to monitor and quantify their findings. These advances will propel healthcare into the future and deliver a truly personalized experience.
Author Bio: This guest post was written by Sasha Bakhru, a leading scientist and bio-medical researcher. Sasha Bakhru is also the co-founder of pharmaceutical company Perosphere. Please see his website for more details.
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