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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