FutureMed2020: seven exponential trends
The Ether Dome in Massachusetts: little has changed since the first person was anesthetized here. The space is used as a museum. The reference to this historic event during the opening of FutureMed symbolizes the huge lack of innovation in health care which is still categorized into separate, independently operating pigeonholes. It can’t go on this way any longer.
Health care silos based on human organs and parts of the body are still staunchly defended. It’s time we started thinking differently about this and doing something about it. How? Firstly, by moving health care towards the home situation where it’s been proven to offer people a better quality of life, and secondly, by making a more integrated use of technology.
Exponential technology
The latest technological developments will be making radical changes in our lives, both within health care and elsewhere. While traditional structures (business, politics) are developing in a linear fashion, technology is developing at an exponential rate. This discrepancy is the thread running through FutureMed and suggests an answer to the question of why health care organizations and other organizations have such a hard time with innovation.
Moore's Law
First, however, let’s have a look at technology itself. How often have you heard that ‘nothing is certain anymore’ and that ‘it almost seems like the world is changing overnight?’ These statements are based on Moore’s Law that argues that technology is developing exponentially. At first, an innovation is almost invisible: it seems as if certain technical innovations are only for nerds or gadget freaks. Suddenly, however, ‘something happens’ and the innovation is sweeping the whole world in a flash. This is the moment when the curve takes to the sky (a phenomenon also known as the ‘knee of the curve’). In years to come, many technologies in health care will pass this ‘knee of the curve’, go viral, and completely overturn how health care is organized. But which technologies will these be? I’ll sketch them out here and come back to them later with some specific examples.
Trend 1. Imaging: a picture of each part of the body
The computer will generate three-dimensional images in combination with radiological scans and combine these in real time with automated animations. Mobile devices will ensure a substantial change in diagnosis and treatment that will take place more accurately and with greater patient involvement.
Trend 2. The iPhone becomes our most important piece of clothing
The breakthrough of the iPhone means that mobile technology has found its way into health care. This technology is getting faster, cheaper and more accessible to large groups of people. ‘One of the most important developments in health care will be prescribing the use of apps' One of the most important developments in health care will be prescribing the use of apps. At the same time, gaming will have a powerful impact on health care and will make treatment, training and lifestyle coaching more effective. A good example is the Kinect or Leap Motion movement technology that can create incentives. This will lead to a new way of dealing with the computer and mobile technology. And the Netherlands just happens to be a major player in this, as could be seen during the conference given last week by Jurriaan van Rijswijk’s Games for Health Europe Foundation.
Trend 3. Diagnosis: use the device next to the hand blender in the kitchen cabinet
In addition to mobile technology itself, there are countless (and cheap) diagnostic devices available to consumers. These take all kinds of measurements and (over a longer period) provide an insight into them that wasn’t available a short time ago. Good examples range from the permanent monitoring of heart rhythm, blood pressure, SpO2, remote hearing tests and remote vision tests to lab-on-a-chip technology for running analyses of urine, blood, etc. We are involved in this in the Netherlands, too, as Tonnie Vogel and I made known during the Skipr conference last spring.
Trend 4. Artificial intelligence and robots
Employing artificial intelligence (AI) is important in being able to conduct analyses. There will come a time when AI will provide diagnosis that will be cheaper and more effective than diagnoses made by people. AI is being combined with robots that can take over such daily tasks as folding the laundry. Who wouldn’t welcome this?
'AI is being combined with robots that can take over such daily tasks as folding the laundry. Who wouldn’t welcome this
Robots are being introduced as helpers (e.g., they can lift someone into a bed), for support (during surgery), to perform tasks (a robotic anesthesiologist) and to repair imperfections in our body. According to certain speakers at FutureMed, cost management and quality improvement in all professional disciplines are requiring the precision and speed that robots can offer. And they can replace people. After all, robots don’t make mistakes and won’t ask for monthly wages. The trend to make robots look friendlier so they can no longer be distinguished from real creatures is working out well. One example of this is the Pleo. A study among children younger than four showed that they thought they were playing with real live creatures like a cat or dog. These findings are similar to those of the study in which patients suffering from dementia were given Paro the seal robot.
Trend 5. Big data, information display and the wisdom of the crowd
‘Wisdom of the crowd’ just might be the most important development of all: the sharing, using and then sharing again of information with everyone on the planet via internet and having big data contribute to our knowledge and solving our problems. This is something entirely new. In another six years, around three billion more people will have access to the internet. In other words: three billion new inventors, three billion new consumers, three billion new thinkers connected to the rest of the world. This will have an enormous impact and will accelerate innovation even faster, both in health care and everywhere else.
Trend 6. Our body as a Lego box
The growing insight into our genes and nanotechnology combined with new production methods such as 3D printing are making it possible to reproduce complete organs, create synthetic tissue and embed nanorobots inside pills. Standardized care is making way for personalized medicine tailored to the individual, and online 3D printing technologies are helping to make this available to anyone anywhere. And this is a factor in our much longer average life expectancy. 3D printing could make food shortages a thing of the past as shown by a cake produced by 3D printing during the conference. Combining these technologies with genomics could dramatically improve treatments and pharmaceutical technologies. Google has taken up the challenge by starting a new company with the mission of conquering death itself. These technologies are finding their way to consumers in the form of ‘recreational genomics’ that I wrote about in a previous blog after my terrifying company tour of 23andme.com (another company, by the way, that Google invested in).
Trend 7. Our brains online
The last trend I’d like to list individually is the possibility, thanks to the increasing insight into how our brain works, of having a greater influence over this. This can be done not only by downloading knowledge from our brain and sharing it with the community, but also by mastering online technologies to upload or influence how our brain works. There’s already a special headset that people can wear to get their brain into a certain creative mood. Apparently, Tesla uses this to increase its people’s capacity to develop ideas for the cars it manufactures.
Phew..., do I really want all of this?
‘Anyone reading all this might think that everyone at FutureMed has gone crazy’ Anyone reading all this might think that everyone at FutureMed has gone crazy. It might be rather terrifying: do we really want all of this? I’m afraid that whether we want it or not, these exponential developments are heading our way. They’ve already arrived, and they’ll undoubtedly continue. We can, however, make choices about how we deal with these developments and what they will mean for our own position as human beings, as a company and as a health care organization. So that’s it for the Singularity Movement. Starting tomorrow: excitement about countless breathtaking innovations and all the conceivable reservations about them.
This blog appeared previously at Skipr.nl.
