Modern tech has had such an intricate and all-encompassing impact on life and business, that it’s easy to forget how profound they have been and how fast we are progressing in each field continuously.
Healthcare in particular has seen some amazing improvements in the available technology for not just treating patients, but also educating the future generation of healthcare workers. Stay with us as we take a brief look at some of those deep impacts and how it has changed healthcare as we once knew it.
The Discovery of the 11 Genes in Human Beings, Which Metastasize Cancer
In 2018, cancer researchers at the University of Alberta were able to successfully identify the 11 genes which are primarily responsible for metastasizing and spreading of cancers cells. If the 11 genes can be inhibited, cancer metastasis can be prevented completely.
They utilized a tool described as a knockout library to insert hairpin RNA (shRNA) vectors into cancer cells for inhibiting genes, which were artificially introduced onto a shell-less bird embryo later on.
Cardiac Surgery Simulation
Cardiac surgeries are among the trickiest and the riskiest ones to undertake, which is why the Super Beat cardiac muscle has proven itself to be groundbreaking in terms of aiding cardiac surgeons to train, rectify, and practice risky procedures as many times as they need to.
It’s an artificially created cardiac muscle with the ability to mimic an actual human heartbeat with surprising accuracy. It goes a step beyond VR mind you, because virtual reality based cardiac surgery simulators cannot simulate the actual feel of performing the surgery like Super Beat can. However, the potential for combining the realistic heart muscle with a VR simulation is hopefully not lost on the right people.
Advanced Online Education to Meet the Growing Deficit in Healthcare Workers
The US healthcare segment is lacking in nursing professionals and doctors, and it is also suffering from a severe deficit in healthcare administrators, operations managers, quality checking and improvement managers, healthcare consultants and various other indirectly connected healthcare workers and executives as well.
Thanks to the availability of improved technology in both hardware and software, respected establishments such as Suffolk University can now offer their courses via an online platform. Their Health Sector Management Concentration for MBA students takes full advantage of all the advances made in communications tech to educate healthcare professionals all around the US, so that they can take up the higher responsibilities and welcome the associated career prospects.
This may not yet be enough to meet all deficits, but the availability of these advanced online platforms will be able to curb the upcoming surge in deficit, to a certain degree. The same online platforms are also just as applicable for educating nurses, health informatics professionals, nursing assistants, physician’s assistants and others like them, so that they can take up higher responsibilities in their respective fields of work.
Tracking Bacteria
The California Institute of Technology deserves a special mention on this list because they have figured out a way to track the progress of salmonella and E. coli bacteria (genetically engineered strains) through sound waves. Although it’s applicable in only controlled environments and while working with suitably altered bacterium only, they are still going to provide groundbreaking information to medical researchers and bacteriologists to work with.
The sonic monitoring would be priceless in tracking the movement of bacteria in a diseased body, which in turn would enable them to contribute towards figuring out more valid methods for addressing the growing concern of antibiotics-resistant bacteria.
A Method to Treat Deafness with Drugs
The potentials for this could be groundbreaking, but it has not yet managed to make it past the testing stage with mice. Decibel Therapeutics could have the keys to curing deafness with medicine though, because the mice in proven test results are showing remarkable improvements.
From stopping cancer to curing deafness, all this points to a future where the intervention of technology in furthering the advent of modern healthcare will be much beyond what has been possible until now. With each passing year, innovations across all fields are overlapping and connecting with each other to unify progress in our technological prowess, as a whole. We just discussed the healthcare sector and even the role of modern education on its growth, but much of that has been fueled by progress in networking, computing and electronics to name a few very broad categories.
