Recent Advancements in Medical Technology

The book frames its closing survey of medical technology with the observation that innovation in medical diagnosis has taken leaps and bounds precisely because of the integration of technology with basic physics, and it discusses eight such advancements in turn: virtual reality, precision medicine, health wearables, artificial organs, 3D printing …

Medical virtual reality is used effectively to stop the brain from processing pain and to cure soreness in hospitalised patients -- a non-drug way of managing discomfort by controlling what the patient perceives. It has also enhanced surgery itself, since surgeons can use 3D virtual-reality models to plan operations before making a single incision, rehearsing the procedure in a realistic simulated environment first. Beyond surgical planning, the book notes it also helps in the treatment of autism, memory loss, and mental illness, where a controlled, repea …

Precision medicine is an emerging approach to disease treatment and prevention that explicitly accounts for individual variability in a person's genes, environment, and lifestyle. Rather than treating every patient the same way, this model makes it possible to customise healthcare -- medical decisions, treatments, practices, or products are tailored to the individual patient rather than applied uniformly. The book's own illustration makes this concrete: Patient A, carrying Mutation A, is matched to Drug A, while Patient B, carrying a different Mutation B, is matched to a diff …

A health wearable is a device used for tracking a wearer's vital signs, health and fitness data, location, and similar personal metrics continuously through the day. Medical wearables combined with artificial intelligence and big data add real value to healthcare, with a particular focus on diagnosis, treatment, patient monitoring and prevention -- turning what used to be an occasional hospital reading into a continuous stream of clinically useful data. The book defines 'Big Data' directly alongside this point: extremely large data sets that may be analysed computationally to reveal patterns, trends and associations, especially those relating …

An artificial organ is an engineered device or tissue that is implanted or otherwise integrated into a human body. It is possible to interface it with living tissue, or to have it replace a natural organ outright, and in either case it duplicates or augments one or more specific functions of the organ it stands in for. The stated goal is practical rather than purely biologic …

Advanced 3D-printer systems, together with the specialised materials they print with, now assist physicians across a wide range of medical operations, spanning audiology, dentistry, orthopedics, and other applications -- letting devices, implants, or models be built to match one individual patient's exact anatomy rather than being chosen off the shelf from a limited set of standard sizes. A hearing aid shell, a dental crown or a custom orthopedic support can each be printed layer by layer directly fr …

Wireless brain sensors monitor intracranial pressure and temperature once implanted, and are then simply absorbed by the body over time. Because the sensor itself dissolves rather than remaining as a permanent foreign object inside the patient, there is no need for a second surgical procedure purely to remove the monitoring device once it has finished doing its job. This matters most for patients recovering from a traumatic brain injury, where continuous, real-time pressure and temperature readings are clinically important, but where subjecting an a …

Robotic surgery is a type of surgical procedure carried out using robotic systems under a surgeon's direct control. Robotically-assisted surgery helps to overcome the limitations of pre-existing minimally-invasive surgical procedures -- such as restricted range of motion or reduced precision when working through a small incision -- and it also enhance …

Inhalers remain the main treatment option for asthma. Smart inhalers are designed with both health systems and the patient in mind, so that they can offer the maximum possible benefit from the medication being delivered. They use Bluetooth technology to detect each time the inhaler is actually used, to remind patients when it is time to take their medication, a …