Medical technology is the application of science in developing solutions to health issues or problems like monitoring good health and delaying the progressiveness of a disease. It helps in accurate and early diagnosis of health issues, thus improving outcomes and promoting timely intervention. Telemedicine can help in monitoring a patient’s condition and specialized products or innovations help in repairing, replacing, and improving failing body functions. This has enabled people to live full and active lives. Some of these tools include ultrasound scans, pregnancy tests, eyeglasses, digital health tools, and much more. The growth of mobile internet is driving change in medical technology.
Following are types of medical technologies:
Personalized medicine.
Is one of the most utilized trends in medical technology and involves the personalization of medicine. It occurs at different levels and is mostly used in pharmacology and biotechnology.
Pharmacogenomics is one area of medical technology that is experiencing rapid development as an application for abating the opiate crisis in America. Scientists can study individual’s responsiveness to doses and drugs. And as result choose a personalized combination of drugs to avoid side effects due to overprescribing a particular drug. Another application of personalized medicine is in RNA-based therapeutics. This application is meant to change specific genetic data in the RNA and help in preventing genetic abnormalities before being translated into functioning proteins. Scientists are working to use these methods in combatting rare genetic diseases like neurologic disorders, Huntington’s disease, and forms of cancer.
Telehealth.
Expansion of mobile internet and innovation of wearable devices and video conferencing technology has revolutionized telehealth. By using a mobile device and a two-way camera, health care practitioners can communicate with patients from a distance. The patient may be unable to use transport means to the facility or he/ she may be in the countryside. One can use health gadgets like wearable devices to monitor blood pressure, blood oxygenation, and heart rate. Supplements that are web-enabled or app enable may save both the patients’ and health providers’ time and energy by filtering requests accordingly. Telehealth saves lives by overcoming barriers like language, transportation, and geography.
Regular checkups on older people can help in preventing heart attacks, strokes, and other diseases as exposure to pathogens are reduced by minimizing interactions. With the growth of technology and incorporation of virtual reality into telehealth, the future seems to be bright as it may graduate from simple virtual checks ups to medical procedures performed remotely which may involve the aid of robotics.
Blockchain.
The Healthcare industry is affected by data breaches which cost companies a sum of $3.86 million annually. Medical facilities are data goldmines as they contain private information on individuals which poses a great security risk as technology grows. Prospects of sharing medical data between scientists or medical facilities can land on a stumbling block due to fear of data breach even though the process promotes effective treatment. Experts think that the solution to data breaches is blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is built on unhackable cryptography, and it stores distributed ledgers of large amounts of data. The technology is useful as it helps in saving costs for patients and healthcare providers and it also, ensures that there are no middlemen. Medical fraud in the US alone costs around $60 billion annually, and blockchain technology can help in reducing these instances. ALLIVE is one of the blockchain systems that seek to solve these frauds. ALLIVEhas an entire healthcare ecosystem, an encrypted health profile, and an AI doctor. Other such systems are being innovated.
AI and machine learning.
Computers and humans must work together in delivering top-quality medical care. Supplied with a large amount of raw data, machine learning and artificial intelligence work at their best. AI and machine learning can help health care specialists by reducing burnout, solving uncertainty of image scan analysis, and support treatment options and non-absolute diagnoses. AI and ML get better with use as they are like disruptive technologies.
