doctors and Nurses working 75 years ago, when the UK’s National Health Service was established, would have been totally unaware of modern hospital wards. Fast-forward to the future, and hospitals could be in big shape again. These are some of the changes we will see over the next few years.
Fully autonomous surgical robot
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are developing a surgical robot that can perform surgery fully autonomously. The robot is equipped with his 3D vision and machine learning algorithms to enable planning and adaptation during surgery. Last year, the robot, dubbed the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, performed laparoscopic surgery on a tissue model of a pig and successfully sutured the ends of the pig’s intestines.
Smart toilets that monitor and detect disease
In March 2023, smart home company Withings unveiled the U-Scan, a 90mm pebble-shaped urine tester that attaches to a toilet bowl to monitor biomarkers in urine such as ketone bodies and vitamin C levels. The device lasts three months between charges and can also track a woman’s monthly hormonal fluctuations by measuring luteinizing hormone levels and pH.
virtual reality therapy
A study published in a medical journal lancetResearchers at the University of Oxford and health tech company Oxford VR have found that VR therapy is more effective than standard therapy at reducing symptoms in people with agoraphobia. Called Game Change, the therapy places patients in simulated environments such as cafes and buses and is currently being used by the Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust.
3D printed organs
Last February, a San Antonio, Texas woman received a 3D-printed right outer ear implant. The ear was created using chondrocytes taken from her left ear, then proliferated into billions of copies, and finally she was printed by her GMPrint bioprinter at 3DBio Therapeutics. Although this was the first implant of its kind, many labs around the world have also successfully 3D printed her skin, bone and small organs.
Contactless monitoring
A team of engineers from Australia and Iraq has developed a monitor that can measure a patient’s blood pressure without contact. The device first films a patient for 10 seconds of her from a close distance and analyzes the video using image processing algorithms that can extract important health signals from two areas of her forehead. The same team has also developed similar non-contact monitors that measure temperature and oxygen saturation.
ambient document
Over 500,000 physicians are already using voice recognition software to quickly navigate operating systems and access patient records. In March 2023, Microsoft-owned speech recognition company Nuance released an updated version of its software that enables medical staff to automatically create clinical notes during patient visits. The software, called DAX Express, uses his GPT-4 from Ambient AI and OpenAI.
portable MRI scanner
Health tech company Hyperfine makes Swoop, a portable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Swoop can drive to a patient’s room, plug into a standard wall outlet, and perform a brain scan in about 30 seconds. The scanner uses a magnetic field that is 25 times weaker than his traditional MRI scanners, so the results have lower resolution, but it costs $250,000, which is six times cheaper than his full-size machine. is.
Knife to ‘smell’ tumors
Intelligent surgical instruments such as the iKnife can detect diseases such as cancer within seconds. The device, which combines an electrosurgical blade and a mass spectrometer, was developed by researchers at Imperial College London. The device works by passing an electrical current through biopsied tissue and chemically analyzing the smoke emitted from it. In a recent study, the iKnife achieved a diagnostic accuracy of 89% for uterine cancer.
This article appeared in the July/August 2023 issue of WIRED UK magazine.
