Four things that could change healthcare as we know it
Technology is fast changing the way we think about healthcare, from medicines tailor-made to your genetic make-up to virtual doctor rooms.
It’s a world in which patients can pop pill-sized cameras to allow doctors to get a glimpse of internal organs to diagnose conditions such as stomach cancer.
Discovery Health chief executive officer Jonathan Broomberg recently presented four trends straight out of science fiction that could shape the healthcare of tomorrow.
1. Couture medicine
In the not so distant future, medicines could be tailormade for individuals. Currently, doctors treat most patients with standardised medicine:
“If a patient has diabetes, doctors prescribe insulin for all patients with diabetes,” Bloomberg explains.
He predicts advances in personalised medicine will change this. Personalised medicine is a field in which an individual’s unique characteristics, including their genes, guide how health workers to diagnose and treat them.
In the future, Broomberg predicts doctors will use DNA sequencing to tailor therapy to, for instance, patients’ individual tumours. He says the approach may one day eliminate almost all deaths from some forms of cancer, such as breast cancer.
2. Say hello to Dr Algorithm
Your next doctor’s appointment may happen on your smartphone. Bloomberg says virtual consultations are gaining in popularity.
In January, the United Statesbased interactive health company HealthTap launched a new app called Doctor A.I, as in “artificial intelligence”. Users of the app input symptoms they may be experiencing. The smartphone-based app processes these symptoms and information such as weight and age from user-created electronic patient files and plugs this data into sophisticated algorithms. With these algorithms based on doctor-sourced clinical expertise, the app dispenses medical advice and can help users schedule either in-person visits or live virtual consultations with doctors.
Broomberg explains that apps like this will decrease preventable hospital admissions and link patients to care earlier. App-based consultations are likely to take less time than traditional doctors’ visits. “A dermatologist may take 15 minutes to make a diagnosis from looking at a picture, while the machine [will take] 15 seconds to study and give a diagnosis.”
3. Sensors may become the latest accessory
By 2018, Broomberg predicts that there will be five million disposable sensors in the world. These sensors will, for instance, record blood pressure, body temperature and blood sugar levels. For people living with diabetes, this may mean an end to traditional blood sugar monitoring that depends on multiple finger pricks and blood samples each day.
One day, baby “onesies” may come with wearable sensors to monitor infants’ vital signs — and alert parents to trouble, he says.
4. Diagnosing from the inside out
Today, if doctors suspect you have a serious problem in your digestive system, you’re likely to have a camera uncomfortably shoved down your throat. In the future, doctors may just ask you to swallow a tiny, pill-sized camera. These types of pills are part of a new breed of swallowable, injectable, implantable or dissolvable medical technology called “insideables”. Some insideables work as sensors that collect data from inside your body and send it to an app, laptop or the cloud.