Medicine Beyond Today: Hip Hip Hooray?

Thinking about the advances that our world has made up until this day is difficult. So many goals have been achieved.

Dating all the way back to 460 BCE, Hippocrates, a Greek philosopher and the “Father of medicine”, based his idea of medicine on observation and objective reasoning. Later, in 910, a Persian physician, Rhazes was the first person to smallpox and to suggest that blood be a common link to disease. Following, in 1670, after the creation of the microscope, Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovered blood cells and observes the plant and animal tissues and microorganisms. Even later, in 1816, the stethoscope was invented by a woman named Rene Laennec. The list goes on and on, and with a reputation like this, it’s so hard to imagine what the future of medicine holds.

With all of these advancements, ancient doctors and philosophers would probably be astounded; however, the best is still yet to come.

Unfortunately, modern news has left little to the minds of our own with the publication of articles and news reports covering this exact issue. The Medical Futurist argues in one of its articles, titled “What Will Being Healthy Mean In the Future?”, that sole definition of the word “health” could completely change. In fact, this transition has already begun. To be “healthy” is no longer just being free of disease and other deadly sicknesses, now, healthiness is defined as regularly going to yoga, the gym, or even focusing more on the number of calories than on other, previously more important, aspects of life.

The Washington Post has detailed some of the research on one of the newest, most popular medical advancements: the digital pill. Attached to the side of the patient’s abdomen, this monitor will transmit data from the sensor inside of his/her body to the connected phone, alarming them when it is time to take medicine. Then, from this phone, they can also tell the rice-sized capsule that was swallowed to release specific medications. A medical epiphone.

One doctor of The Medical Futurist insists “Only digital health can bring healthcare into the 21st century and make patients the point-of-care” (Dr. Bertalan Meskó). Is this true? Does our the future of medicine belong in the tiny, handheld devices that we play Flappy Bird on all day? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.