Technology is advancing at an unstoppable pace, many of them are the fields of society that get on the train and take advantage of the new milestones that are achieved year after year to achieve better results in their services or products. One of the areas with the greatest growth potential for the future is medicine.
When we talk about the future of health, we must think outside the four traditional walls of the clinic. We’re moving from the hospital to our homes and from there to our phones. In the United States, many pharmacies have already become health centers where you can receive medical care through specialized equipment, as well as through your mobile equipment. This type of care is called Connected Health, Mobile Health, or Digital Health.
Dr Daniel Kraft, one of the world’s leading authorities in the use of technology in medicine, explains that with the Internet and the use of new technologies in medicine, the opportunity will be created to unify all this available data to make better health decisions.
“The combination of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, 3D Printing, Nanotechnology, Genomics and Virtual Reality will allow us to face the great challenges we have in the industry that are common in many parts of the world such as high costs, aging population and lack of doctors,” Kraft explains.
To potentialize the benefits of these trends, the doctor believes that we must accelerate the shift to that future, stop thinking about care according to each specialty and allow technology to connect the collected data continuously, personalized and proactively, so that we can change the treatment reactively when we get sick, to take care of ourselves in health, even at a lower cost , more accurately and with better results.
Data usage
The fact that technology has become democratized and almost anyone can have a smartphone or tablet in their pocket, “allows us to re-imagine our world in the coming years and increase the potential of the equipment and tools that will empower consumers,” says the doctor.
In this sense, Kraft proposes a not-too-distant future in which medical care is focused on real-time observation of patients’ digital biomarkers; which will allow you to set health goals for each person. These measures will allow diagnoses and treatments that in many cases would not have to include drugs, but change of habits.
This observation would be achieved through equipment that measure blood pressure, muscle mass index, blood sugar, physical posture, breathing quality, food intake, etc. These and other biomarkers can be measured through smartwatches, equipment that is inserted under the skin, devices that are placed on the back, equipment that measure air quality and personal breath quality, among others.
Measuring all this, turned into data, would work in an interconnected system that Kraft calls “the internet of medical things,” which patients deliver digitally to doctors, who in turn can apply preventive medicine to the patient.
Kraft noted that 80% of the world’s health costs come from diseases caused by poor diet, physical inactivity, poor physical posture, cigarette use, stress, insufficient sleep and excessive alcohol consumption. Thus, the doctor explains that identifying and monitoring health habits will prevent such diseases.
But to achieve this picture, the scientist said that the medical incentives of health systems must also be changed, as it is currently paid for and not prevented for the treatment of diseases (sickcare), so “incentives must be transferred to preventive health services,” he says.
A bright and more interconnected future is what the outstanding physician-scientist, entrepreneur and inventor sees in the area of health. “I hope that this new form of collaboration between scientists and physicians around the world will bring better and smarter health and can be applied to other diseases to prevent other pandemics,” Kraft concludes.
Daniel Kraft will participate in Future Congress 2021, which will take place from Monday, January 18 to Thursday, January 21 of the same month.
