The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands
Get insight into the future of medicine!
We've all experienced the routine at the doctor's office: spending hours in the waiting room next to sniffling, coughing folks, increasing our chances of becoming sicker than we were before. When we finally visit a doctor, we usually get 15 minutes or less of face time and a prescription for a costly pharmaceutical that will work if we're lucky. And that is just if we live in an area where doctors are easily accessible.
But this does not have to be our future. New technology is altering how medicine is done and who is capable of performing it. It is causing a power shift and a transformation in what has become today's medical sector. So, let's imagine a future in which we reverse the roles and say, "The patient will see you now."
In these summaries, you will learn:
This article discusses how modern technology reduces the need for hospitals, how an app can save dermatologists time, and how mobile phones can benefit healthcare in impoverished countries.
1. Smartphones provide better access to medical information and will eventually provide individuals the ability to diagnose themselves.
Smartphones have revolutionised many aspects of our life. They enable unprecedented access to information with a simple mobile connection, which is available to 95 percent of the population. They will undoubtedly have a large impact on medicine.
Smartphones will soon enable autonomous medicine, allowing people to diagnose themselves. Some tools for this already exist, such as the SkinVision app.
SkinVision enables you to email a snapshot of a skin lesion to a doctor, who will assess if it is benign or not.
And images are only the beginning. Microscopic scans will soon have such powerful zoom capabilities that we can scan ourselves for specific sorts of bacteria. Tuberculosis is diagnosed by testing sputum for the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Anyone with a smartphone will soon be able to self-test for tuberculosis.
Smartphones have the ability to significantly improve health outcomes in places where people do not have easy access to medical specialists. In 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa had an average of 1.1 doctors and nurses per 1,000 people. In the United States, the number was 12.3.
Mobile connections also improve people's access to health information. In 2013, over 630 million individuals in Africa owned cell phones, 93 million of which were smartphones. Even non-smartphones can affect public health. The South African organisation Masiluleke, for example, distributes millions of text messages per day encouraging individuals to be tested for HIV/AIDS.
But, of course, cell phones remain more powerful. Nanobiosym, a biotechnology startup, recently unveiled Gene Radar, a tiny chip that fits into a mobile device and detects tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV in blood or saliva. Gene Rader will let consumers self-diagnose these diseases at a tenfold lower cost than the current market price.
2. Technology will transfer power from physicians to patients.
In today's medical world, patients have become accustomed to obeying their doctor's orders. However, this will change in the future.
Doctors have long been regarded as the ultimate authority in medicine. In fact, Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek philosopher, believed that physicians should keep facts from patients for their own welfare.
Medical students continue to recite the Hippocratic Oath, which claims that only those who have swore by it may be trusted with medical expertise.
Recently formed guidelines, such as the American Medical Association's Code of Ethics, continue to echo this sentiment, stating that physicians may treat patients without their consent if doing so would be medically inappropriate - or unhealthy for them.
The "doctor's orders" remain the final say on a patient's treatment. Patients do not choose their own treatment, and the majority just accept their doctor's directions.
Patients will get more influence when technology allows them more access to their genetic information. Knowing more about your DNA allows you to make more informed medical decisions.
Angelina Jolie did this when she opted to undergo a double mastectomy. She discovered she had a significant risk of getting breast and ovarian cancer after analysing her family history, and a genetic examination of her blood confirmed this.
Jolie was discovered to have an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer due to a BRCA1 gene mutation, so she elected to have both breasts removed ahead of time.
Jolie made her decision public to teach others about the power and significance of genetic testing, which will continue to gain popularity as it becomes more accessible.
23andMe, an American business, currently offers a gene variant report on your saliva sample for $100.
3. Technology will transform our existing medical infrastructure.
As cellphones empower people, the medical sector will evolve.
For starters, we'll go to the doctor less frequently. Thanks to virtual healthcare services such as Doctor on Demand, MD Live, and Teladoc, patients can already contact a physician without leaving their homes. A regular Teladoc appointment costs about the same as an in-person visit, but the service is available 24/7, and there is no wait time. That's much more handy than waiting an hour to see a doctor for only 10 minutes.
Patients will also spend significantly less time in hospitals. This has already begun to happen. Between 1975 and 2013, the number of hospitals in the United States decreased from 7,156 to 4,995. Many therapies that used to require many days in the hospital are now completed in 24 hours as outpatients.
Mobile technologies will only further reduce the necessity for hospitals. Remote monitoring, conference conferencing, and intelligent pillboxes that track medicine use will allow people to manage their health from their homes.
The Montefiore Medical Centre in New York is an excellent example of this. It features eleven stories, twelve operation rooms, and no beds, as no one needs to remain overnight.
The excessive cost of health care will also be lowered. Health care in the United States is quite expensive. Some hospitals charge $1,200 for every $100 of total costs, and administrative costs account for $190 billion in annual waste.
Only some people in the medical field comprehend the gravity of this situation. In fact, a 2014 survey of over 500 orthopedics revealed that they only recognized the price of routinely used devices less than 20% of the time.
Smartphone apps such as Castlight and PokitDok make the medical world more open by providing accurate information on medical prices for patients to compare.
4. We'll soon be able to create a comprehensive map of each individual's medical information.
We now have extraordinary data collection and storage capabilities. This is another technical advancement that will significantly impact the medical field.
We are working on creating a human-friendly version of Google Maps: a Graphic Information System (GIS) that superimposes numerous layers of information on a single map.
GISes are already used to analyze traffic, satellite, and building data. But soon, we'll be able to create a human GIS that will allow people to superimpose various types of critical medical information onto a digital map.
It would contain physiological information like your heart rate, genetic information about your DNA and its mutations, and anatomical information on the structure of your bones and organs.
Some components of the human GIS will be easier to create than others. The physiological layer is already relatively advanced, as we can monitor physiological processes such as heart rate and ocular pressure using commercially accessible portable sensors.
Other layers, such as the genetic layer, are significantly more complex. We've already gathered a wealth of gene-related information: the Human Genome Project has identified and sequenced 90 percent of human DNA. The cost of sequencing your genome has dropped dramatically: in 2004, it cost $28 million, whereas last year, it cost less than $1,500.
But there is still a long way to go. Each person’s genome comprises roughly 3.5 million variants; approximately 19,000 of those variants can’t be identified with modern technology. We still need to invest heavily in genetic research before creating detailed genomic layers for the human GIS.
5. A human GIS and access to extensive data would significantly improve healthcare.
Healthcare care with all the new data the human GIS will provide?
The human GIS will allow us to implement various innovative therapeutic strategies. The physiological layer will help us keep track of symptoms, such as using biosensors to monitor an asthmatic child's airways. This would allow the child's parents to predict her next asthma attack, allowing them to ensure that her inhaler is always on hand.
The genetic layer will assist us with disease prevention. Hereditary knowledge is already a warning to parents, as most diseases have hereditary predispositions. Nearly one in 40 people carry dangerous recessive genes for cystic fibrosis, for instance, and one in 35 carry for spinal muscular atrophy.
If a couple knows there’s a high risk they’ll pass a disease on to their child, they might want to consider other options like adoption.
The range of available medical treatments will broaden even further as human GIS combines big data, improving areas such as cancer treatment.
We presently have a few cancer treatment choices, including chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and medications. What works for one cancer patient might not work well for others, but GIS information could be collected from patients who’ve been treated in the past. Researchers could use that data to determine what treatments are best for a patient’s particular genetic makeup.
Big GIS data could significantly improve case diagnosis accuracy. Today, little help is available for patients with rare or unknown diseases, but a large GIS database would make it much easier for scientists to understand their conditions.
6. Big data may help us predict prevalent diseases.
Do you know anyone with diabetes? You probably do because it’s one of the most common chronic illnesses. Roughly 29 million Americans have it.
Chronic illnesses are difficult to treat because they often can’t be cured. Treatment focuses on managing symptoms, so patients may suffer from them their entire lives.
Chronic illnesses also drain medical resources. In fact, about 80 percent of the 3 trillion dollars spent on health care every year in the United States goes toward chronic illnesses.
Big data has the power to change things, however. In the future, it may help us predict and prevent chronic illness.
Consider Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, for instance. PTSD affects an estimated 24.4 million Americans. If we could analyze that data, we might be able to predict when it’s about to set in.
If healthcare professionals predict that a returning war is about to lapse into PTSD, they could treat it preemptively, potentially saving the person from the condition.
This advanced disease prediction might seem far off, but we’re already progressing. In fact, a computer algorithm called Healthmap predicted the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak nine days before the World Health Organization (WHO) did.
The Health Map prediction analyzed data from tens of thousands of online media providers, such as news sites, social networks, and government websites. It mapped search engine results for symptoms and their locations.
The algorithm was able to conclude that Ebola was the cause of the epidemic over a week before doctors began to diagnose it, by which point it had already spread to some hospitals.
Predicting an Ebola outbreak is different from predicting an onset of PTSD, however. We still have a lot of work to do to make them useful in individual diagnoses.
7. Detailed medical data is dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.
Big Data has enormous power to revolutionize the medical world. Unfortunately, that power could also be used for evil.
Medical identity theft is already a problem in today’s world. People can steal your medical identity and use it to obtain treatments like prescription drugs. They can also use your insurance information to pay for their medical therapy or treatment for others.
Since 2009, sixty-eight US medical records have been breached. Hackers can do this in several ways, such as gaining access to hospital databases or stealing hardware containing medical data.
Our medical privacy has to be protected. But hackers and thieves aren’t the only people we have to protect it from.
There are also concerns about the privacy of genetic information. Insurance companies could use it to discriminate against people who have predispositions for chronic diseases by refusing them coverage. Some states have already enacted laws to prevent this by forbidding insurance companies from gaining access to genetic information.
Genetic information could also be used in unsavory ways by marketing companies. Data brokers like Acxiom earn money by selling people’s personal data to marketing companies. Acxiom already has information on the names, income, home valuation, and medical history of over 200 million Americans.
If companies like Acxiom got ahold of our genetic information as well, the marketing possibilities would be even scarier than they are today. Imagine you were to get an ad for cystic fibrosis treatment before you knew you had it or were vulnerable to it.
Ultimately, your information should be yours.
Final summary
The future of medicine is upon us. Our technological developments are already overthrowing the current system, and many of those developments have only just begun. New technology improves treatment and gives patients more agency in their health care. Soon, we’ll develop a system where every individual has power over his or her body.