New Developments

New Developments

Medicine of the future
"The robotic doctor and virtual patient. Chips in the hip and gamma knives. These advances in medicine that boggle the imagination have computers playing an intrinsic role"

We have seen more advances in medical science in the last 50 years than ever before. Our worlds transformed in way that surpass the wildest imagination. Technology that exists today was unthinkable in the 1950s. Is it possible to even predict the technology 25 years hence? Where will the techno-human evolution lead us in the next millennium? 


Open Your Body, Your Mind
 
“The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut form the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,” said sir John Eric Erickson, British surgeon appointed to Queen Victoria in the Year 1873.
But, how wrong he was! Medical science has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Now, it is considered routine for doctors to conduct delicate surgery using lasers. Fiber-optic cables connected to video cameras permit them to see inside the body and operate through tiny holes in the skin without even cutting the skin. Open-heart surgery had caught the world’s imagination when it was first conducted. Today, a revolutionary new system is set to take on the medical world by storm. 

Doctors have begun testing a robotic surgery procedure in the United States that could get heart surgery patients back to work within days instead of weeks. The new system combines robotics and computer imaging. It allows doctors to perform heart surgery by controlling miniature hands inside the chest cavity through one-centimeter incisions. The robotic hand is allowed seven degrees of freedom of movement at the wrist, Just like the human wrist, and is wonder fully ergonomic. Since incisions are minute compared to those made in traditional open-heart surgery, doctors expect patients to have a shorter recovery time and suffer significantly less pain. Surgeons control the robotic appendages with joysticks and watch their progress via a 3-D computer image. 

It’s not unlike surgery; however in this case, the surgeon is always in absolute control of the machine as well as the operation. The advantage of this amazing technology is that in a matter of days the surgeon can learn the procedure. 

It does seem that genetic engineering, biometric chips, incision-free and robotized surgery will become conventional in the years to come.

Cancer and Technology
A new computer-assisted process could help radiologists minimize the margin of error in mammogram screenings. The technology is designed to complement standard mammography film into a digital signal that can be analyzed by a computer.
 
With “pointers” on a video screen, the computer alerts radiologists to small clusters of micro calcifications and tiny clusters of cell that could be the early stages of cancer. Preliminary tests based on a study of 104 mammograms have found that the computer can find some cancers that doctors might have otherwise missed. But researchers caution that future studies are still needed to determine the accuracy of the tool.

Clinical trials of the Image Checker demonstrated that for every 100,000 breast cancer currently detected, use of the tool could result in the early detection of an additional 12,800 cancers each year -- This information is for my cousin brother who is sufferring with metastic malignant melinoma




Conclusion
 
Meanwhile, the continuing technological explosion will bring the eradication of many diseases. It will also usher in an era of lifelong learning, broad access to information resources and maybe even virtual vacations on earth and space.
 
What we will witness in our lifetime could be the evolution of a new breed of medical treatment. The new generation who are in medical school or in the research domain will play an important role in shaping the world of tomorrow. And advancing towards it will be every bit as exciting and full of surprises as the last five decades have been for the medical community.



 Harini Katakam......
 
 

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