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INNOVATIONS: New medical technology could soon replace familiar practices.
By Hannah Lerstad, Staff Writer
The field of medicine has come a long way since the days of the cure-all solution: leeches. Even though medical practices have improved since then, new discoveries and inventions will soon outperform the procedures of today, as future generations are likely to advance medicine even further. With doctors and medical researchers striving towards better medical innovations every day, some old processes are bound to become obsolete.
Eye surgery as we know it will most likely be a thing of the past within two or three decades. NOVA, a show on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), recently debuted a new approach to eye surgery. While it is only in its testing stage, a micro-robot controlled by magnetism is being applied to cure diabetic retinopathy, a type of blindness caused by blocked blood vessels in the retina. Scientists can insert the micro-robot – a magnet one hundredth of an inch wide – into the eye and use it to distribute tiny amounts of medicine that will unclog the blood vessels, curing the patient’s blindness. This micro-robot can potentially reduce the need for invasive surgery.
Apps are also making many devices obsolete by combining all of their functions on an iPad. According to the New York Times, doctors have created “ePocrates, an app for looking up drug dosages and interactions; and Qx Calculate, which [doctors use] to create risk profiles for [their] patients.”
Another medical procedure that will probably change is traditional laryngoscopy, a process in which a scope is placed down a patient’s throat. A device known as a “pillcam” is likely to be used instead. The pillcam, a miniature camera shaped like a pill, allows doctors to look for problems such as cancer, bleeding and Crohn’s disease inside a patient’s small intestine. It sends pictures back to the doctor’s office, doing everything a scope does without causing the patient unnecessary pain.
Even one of the newest medical innovations – prosthetic limbs – could be outdated soon, with the help of technology that sounds like something from a science fiction movie. New prosthetics controlled by brain signals are being tested. However, they are currently cumbersome and require the patient to have a cord running from his or her brain to the computer that controls the prosthesis. Doctors hope that future innovations in medical technology will allow brain-controlled prosthetics to become wireless.
While medicine has come a long way since leeches, many of the medical practices we are familiar with will be obsolete within a few decades. With the help of new technology, medicine will continue to improve and make people’s lives easier.