Medicine's Future - There's an App for That - Essay Example

Health sciences and medicine This paper presents a summary of the video on exponential technologies and their leverage on human health care addressed by Daniel Kraft, a physician scientist and an innovator in medicine future. He leads the medicine track in Singular University. He states that instead of prescribing drugs doctors will soon prescribe apps to patients and gives examples of how technology in medicine is becoming digital and portable. In the video, he explains the impact of dramatically developing technologies to human health and medicine. In the video the scientist also talks about a robotic scar less surgery soon going to be introduced, known as ‘NOTES’ and the different devices that will keep us informed 24/7 detecting our pulse rate, heart beat etc. Moreover, it provides my reflection on the information shared in the video and argues about the advantages and disadvantages as technology becomes more incorporated into modern health care. Health sciences and medicine Daniel Kraft is a physician scientist who invents and brings innovations in the field of medicine. Future Medicine program is lead by him at Singular University where he discovers fast growing technology and its effects on human health and medicine. He is the inventor of ‘MorrowMiner’, a simplest persistent device for bone marrow. In the video, he presents a look at the speedy development in the medicine using new apps, tools, and tests, which can make diagnostic information much faster and accurately to patients in their homes in next few years. In the video, Daniel shares information of a rare type of DNA called Haplotype K1a1b1a and gives examples as to how our health in the future is going to be affected by “leveraging cross-disciplinary, exponentially growing technologies, from low-cost gene analysis, being able to perform influential bio-informatics to the connection of internet and social networking” (Kraft, 2011). Describing exponential technologies the speaker states that they have started to affect other technologies, which we can force to affect our own health and can deal with the foremost challenges we face today in health care. Daniel Kraft is a part of a medicine program at Singular University where he trains hundreds of students that how can they meet the challenges in artificial intelligence, space, medicine etc. through these exponential technologies. Moreover, the speaker suggests that soon they are going to introduce Future Med, program that will leverage technologies into medicine. Talking about the mobile phone, he says there are some diagnostic apps available on our iPhones such as we can measure our blood glucose and send it to our physician for diagnosis. Looking at how exponential technologies are taking health care, the speaker in the video says, we all know that computer technology is innovating day-by-day making us more powerful even exceeding the capability of the human mind in many cases. Besides that technology, which has made us able to look inside the human body, is unbelievingly becoming more advanced such as PET scans and CT scans. Similarly, the molecular diagnostics provides layer-by-layer analysis about the human brain and disease. In the video, the physician has pointed towards the modern MRI, which can show the inside of brain; a facility that was not available before. This process helps us to observe and understand the effects of medicine and can also be made more effective i.e. psychoactive drugs. These kinds of scanners are becoming cheaper and smaller in size and they are also handy and moveable. The biomedicine information technology is becoming digital and wireless now and even portable. Even stethoscopes are digital today and there is an app for that too. Portable ultra sounds have outdone stethoscopes as it is more powerful diagnostic tool and now available at a less expensive price. Medicine technology is becoming more and more electronic. A physician would be able to approach his patient’s data anytime and from anywhere through his mobile phone. The scientist talks about the virtual visits paid to the doctor in the video, by giving an example of Skype in some cases and showing to the audience a picture of the patient’s hair laceration sent to him on his iPad. He also states that he can do few diagnostics using some device that is not expensive, saving the patient a visit. Another example of this can be seen in the video as how a physician can pay robotic visits to his patients to another clinic or hospital. Later in the video, he talks about a device FitBit that has a low price, on which one can measure his daily intake of calories then share it with his physician and friends. Then there are watches coming in the near future through which we can measure our heart beat and even mirrors are being developed that can detect our pulse as shown in the video. Soon we willl have devices that can be worn under our clothes that would be monitoring us all the time. By these kinds of technologies, we will be able to keep a track of our daily health care. After discussing the advantages of these technologies for the patient, the speaker comes to the point as to how this is helping the physicians talking about a scar less surgery that is soon going to be introduced, called ‘NOTES’ shown in the video as how an endoscope is working through the stomach removing the gallbladder and even working inside the brain for those who have some mental disease or paralyzed. In the video, we can see the robotic wearable as well such as augmented limbs a person who has lost a limb can wear, there are ‘eLEGS’ that enable a completely wheel chair bond paraplegic person to walk. At the end, the scientist states that after counting numerous exponential technologies that include curing cancer from the root by identifying cancer stem cell and cardiovascular diseases, we can say that by leveraging these technologies doctors can cure a human being before he or she falls sick. I find these fast growing technologies in medicine useful as they have made curing a disease easier at a very early age through robotic surgery. We can monitor ourselves throughout the day through different devices. On the other hand, I do not agree with the fact of technology is getting cheaper and more accessible as a person in the most need of medical care may not have iPhone. Reference Kraft, D. (2011). Daniel Kraft: Medicines future? Theres an app for that. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kraft_medicine_s_future.html Read More