Medical Technology

Medical technology is not as distant as some believe. There are incredible medical breakthroughs every week that get little publicity because they seem too leading edge.

Medical Technology

Future medical technology has already been mentioned on other pages on this website. I've already talked about future inventions including robotic surgery which is here now. On another page I've talked about future robots that include medical nanobots that target specific cancer cells and other diseased cells and either deliver medicine or remove them altogether.

But, what I didn't talk about on those other pages is that future trends in medicine involving robotic surgery will include the use of lasers, ultra high frequency sound wave, microwaves and pinpoint electromagnetic vibrations.

To expand upon future medical technology involving nanobots, this microscopic robots will not only deliver medicine and cut out unwanted cells, but they will do so precisely, automatically and thoughtfully. Just like robotic surgical machines will have access to large medical databases and make decisions on the fly more accurately than humans, medical nanobots a few years after this will be afforded the same empowerment.

At first, the future medical nanobots will take wireless instructions from a "thinking" computer host outside of the patient's body. But, as the medical nanorobotics field grows and chips and hard drive further downsized, then swarms of nanobots can be release into a human body, load sharing information and working as a team to cure illnesses, conditions and diseases.

Now, let's talk about some other future trends in medicine such as brain-computer interfaces, regenerative medicine, organ replacement, mental health reclamation, dream decoding, gene therapy, home self-monitoring, personalized drugs, bioengineering, bionic limbs and bionic organs, human cloning and customized babies.

It his here I have to note that not all of these future medical technology advances will occur concurrently. Social and moral discourse along with the zigzag evolutionary progression of the technology will hold some advances back while others will shoot to the forefront of popularity and functionality.

Brain-computer interfaces are nothing new. For several years now patients with organic brain diseases or traumatic brain injuries have been able to move a cursor around on a computer monitor using their thoughts. With future medical technology this interface will be much more robust especially in the areas of brain injuries and mental illness.

The brain-computer interface for brain injuries will be able to localize the specific cell-by-cell damage, report the areas of localization and help the patient through brain plasticity to migrate this functionality to other portions of the non-damaged tissue.

For patients with mental illness diagnoses such as thought disorders, hallucinations, delusions, OCD and a myriad of other disorders listed in the DSM IV will be recorded and dealt with using either localized brain stimulation or engaging other technologies such as nanorobots to deliver targeted medication.

As this future medical technology advances, traditional talk therapy from a psychotherapist will be replaced by computers with large databases that can cross reference case studies in nanoseconds and communicate directly with patients. Other applications for brain-computer communication for mental illness will be dealing with cases of PTSD where patients relive traumatic experiences such as war or rape.

The computer will be able to manage flashbacks, help the patient to deal with memories, loss, grief through using the most efficient and effective neural pathways to optimize brain function and healing channels.

Moving on to regenerative medicine, future medical technology will dictate that at first this will take place outside the human body and then through robotic surgery or nanorobots tissue will be replaced. Another offshoot of this process will be organ replacement.

At first, organs from other animals will be used as they are now. But future medical technology will dictate that this tissue will be combined with human tissue, then be transplanted into the patient. A little further down the road, medical technology will advance to the point where patients will grow new organs based upon their own tissue samples.

And based upon this technology this new organ growth will take place inside the body so the transplantation will become unnecessary. The old tissue will simply overtake the diseased tissue regenerating and replacing diseased or damaged tissue at an accelerated rate.

Mental health reclamation I've already discussed, but this will be aided by dream decoding. Right now medical science still does not know the function of dreams and dreaming. Future medical technology however, will crack the code of the healing power of dreaming, deciphering symbols and will use the power of this to not only cure insomnia and other sleep disorders, but to empower one's own dreams for optimal mental health.

The use of computers with large dream databases will be used along with large social dreaming networks where people can interact with others who are also dreaming worldwide. Safety and security nets will need to be employed to prevent all sorts of misuse such as dream bullying or other scare tactics. The dreamer will be able to opt out, change social networks or go off onto other peaceful tangents and fantasies of one's one if desired.

Gene therapy is already happening now and will become more robust in the future. With the Human Genome Project fully analyzed, future medical technology will be able to target specific defective genes in one's DNA and replace those genes with healthy ones. Future computers will easily track, record, analyze and put these in a huge medical database for others to use as needed.

Home self monitoring is also something that is already happening. Diabetics can export data into their home computer and graph insulin usage and other details. Those on CPAP for sleep apnea can also download results and track progress.

But future medical technology will reach a new level of home self monitoring never imagined before. In fact, for some patients, hospitals will become decentralized in that patients will be able to monitor their own conditions from the comfort of their own homes as the first line of defense, then upload the data to a more centralized medical center.

This medical center will analyze the data with a large database and neural network of cloud computing and may engage in some medical procedures with the patient at their own home. Adjusting medication intake, tracking cancer cell growth and deploying nanorobots as necessary and dealing with mental health issues are a few tasks that may be initiated by self monitoring but acted upon in locations outside the home.

In the future, personalized drugs will become increasingly common. No longer will huge pharmaceutical drug cartels roll out common pills for the masses that may have a host of side effects for a percentage of individuals. Small decentralized drug companies will take over that will serve individuals in certain regions.

Future medical technology will get to the point that medicine can be created to individual specifications on an economic basis. Drug companies will have access to a persons medical files from fetus to present age including genetics, diseases, DNA, data from nanorobots, from brain-computer communications, from dream decoding, gene therapy, home self-monitoring, bioengineering, cloning, bionics and a myriad of other medical information per individual. All of this cumulative data will be used to create designer medication specific to each human.

Now to move onto bionic limbs, they already exist and people are using them in the now. No longer is this science fiction, but it is indeed science fact. In the future, however, bionic limbs will be much more elegant and fluid in nature. People will be able to choose bionics over natural limbs and then have these procedures reverse.

Before some of the other more sophisticated technologies that I've already talked about come of age, bionic organs will be in place assisting people to stay alive and remain healthy. This will, however, most likely be more transitional technology than a permanent mainstay. Cold plasma will also be used in fighting disease and will become the norm not too many years from now.

Human Cloning

Human cloning meets much resistance today and will continue to meet resistance though future gene splicing in a step-by-step fashion will help to curb some of this resistance. Conservative religious groups will thwart the growth of science and technology in this area in the near future. Because science and technology will continue to struggle to analyze and quantify the "soul" and "consciousness" to the satisfaction of the masses, this area will not advance as quickly as other areas.

Another area of moral objection will be customized babies. Some parents are presently engaging in this practice today, though it is very controversial. Some parents today create their children using only sperm or eggs from Mensa donors or other "super donors".

There are also some parents that today engage in genetic screening and use artificial insemination to pick suitable candidates basic partly upon genetics and partly upon other factors such as a donor's history, family, status, abilities and many more criteria.

Not all countries will have laws discouraging the future medical technology in this area, so people without moral reservations can shop abroad for services to create their customized children.

This is just a glimpse into the future medical technology that is not very far off. What I have outlined here is happening right now either commercially or in the research labs. This is not science fiction, but rather a prognostication of how the medical technology will play out in the months and years to come.