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Healthcare has come a very long way in the last 50 years, and so has the technology. Now we are able to integrate technology into medicine and medical interventions for better medical outcomes. Most medical innovations have come in the last 10 years, and we are going to look at five of the most exciting of these below in no particular order.
Wearables
Phones and computers have become an important part of our world and it is not surprising to see them integrated into healthcare through wearables. The demand for medical wearable devices has soared in the past few years with medical and technological companies going to great lengths to ensure we get all our medical data whenever we need it. Health wearables are able to monitor and record a number of health statistics. From our exercise regiments to heartbeats, medical wearables are able to record and track it all and alert us should something be out of the norm.
Better diabetes care
Diabetes self-care can be both complicated and painful. In the past, people with diabetics had to take painful insulin shots as well as draw blood to monitor their glucose levels, but this is being done away with now. A company in Philadelphia in the United States has developed a device that is able to detect glucose levels through the skin and used in combination with an insulin pump, it should take away most of the p[ain and complication involved with diabetics care.
Targeted medicine
As technology advances, we get to see and understand that different people react differently to drugs, even the same drug. Targeted or precise medicine allows doctors to tailor medication and medical intervention to a specific patient. The use of DNA and an in-depth understanding of an individual’s genetic makeup are the two things behind this technological breakthrough.
Printed organs
For a long time, medicine has had to rely on donors for organ transplants. In the near future, this could be done away with as we usher in the age of 3D printing. New 3D technology allows medical practitioners to print almost any organ including the skin, liver, and heart and teeth. In addition, this technology can be used to print implants used in surgery which would significantly reduce the amount of time surgeries take.
CRISPR
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is one of the most controversial subjects in the medical world. It is an advanced form of gene editing which takes advantage of gene replacement to come up with several medical interventions. For example, doctors could use bacteria to “cut out” infected or damaged DNA strands. Therefore, CRISPR has the ability to end diseases and conditions that are linked to genetics. That said, it could also be used to edit or manipulate human DNA in ways that have not been thought of yet, hence the controversy surrounding this technology.
