Truly Personalised Medicine, #cdom

I have posted on the mind boggling potential of 3d printers here. Amazing talk by Lee Cronin  on how 3d printers will contribute to the evolution of TRULY personalised medicine.

The Future of Healthcare is the Smartphone.

There are divergent views of how, going forwards (uugh!!) healthcare will evolve. There is an obvious tension in the debate - on the one hand, science, research and development lead to a ever increasing number of expensive treatments to enable us to  live longer and on the other hand  the world is running out of money so that these new treatments cannot be universally available. This is happening as more societies  come to accept the wisdom  and the humanity of universally available healthcare. In the UK, recent  centralising reforms to the NHS suggest authorities feel that changes and developments should come or be imposed from the top. There is an alternative and more exciting view - and that the smartphone - that very personalised (or personalising) connected computer carried by an increasing proportion of the world's population will define the future of healthcare. The future will be defined by the grassroots - the base of the pyramid and not by the apex - and because this development is based on digital technology, it will undoubtedly happen at a pace that will surprise all.
He thinks so and he wrote a book about it.
He thinks so because he once tweeted that the future of healthcare will come out of the barrel of a smartphone and he is (and looks like) a sage.
Here are 2 movies, one from the recent Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas where an increasing number of personalised health related devices are being shown. The second is a promo from a startup that wants to define the future.

Eric Topol, Muir Gray and RyanAir.

Eric Topol and Muir Gray are visionaries and have seen the way health care will evolve over the next few years. Muir Gray once tweeted that the future of healthcare will come out of the barrel of a smartphone. Eric Topol is a very clever cardiologist who works at the influential Scripps Institute in La Jolla, San Diego. He has recently published a book on the personalisation and the digitisation of medicine. Muir and Eric come from different traditions, the first, public health and the National Health Service in the UK and Eric from hi tech hospital based academic cardiology in the United States. Both nonetheless understand the basic rules that will govern healthcare in the future.

This video, demonstrating how an iPhone can be used to record an ECG, is just a small example of the future. I wish I'd had one during my recent Ryanair flight!

 

 

A Cardiothoracic Holy Grail and the future of Medicine.

This article on genetic polymorphisms in patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms interests me for a couple of   

reasons.