Doctors and researchers using innovative technologies for medicine and healthcare: medical wearables, AI, 3D printed and digital organs, stem cells and DNA bank. Photo courtesy: Elenab.
Considering the amazing developments in the field of age reversal and healthcare, here are some expectations with regard to mainstream healthcare in the next 5 odd years:
Proactive and progressive heath check ups: your regular health check up, along with the currently available tests, will include: genomics, blood biomarkers, microbiome testing, in-depth imaging, biological age testing, etc. and will be analysed by AI and expert physicians providing you with pre-symptomatic diagnosis and treatments based on your unique data.
Imagine a 10x improvement in the diagnostic capabilities from what is available today, and the resulting preventive care that can be provided, keeping you healthier, disease free and at a high performance level.
Health monitoring devices: The list of HM (health monitoring) devices we are familiar with and using includes the Fitbit, Apple Watch, and Oura ring. This list will expand to include the next level HM devices, - CGMs (continuous glucose monitors), skin / heart patches, digital pills, advanced wearables, nanobots for advanced imaging and diagnostics, Alexa (Siri or Google) as a health care partner, tricorders to measure multiple health conditions at home, home lab devices to check and test for various infections or indications, etc.
These connected HM devices will become as common as a smart phone and with the vast data set collected, will enable medical practitioners (along with AI) to provide us with individualized healthcare solutions.
Availability of new technologies / treatments : stem cell therapy, gene editing with CRISPR, convergence of global data and AI driven healthcare solutions, big data driven predictive healthcare, AI and ML enabled robotic surgeries, AR/VR supported surgeries, AI and robotics driven minimally invasive surgeries, advanced imaging technologies combining AI, AR, VR and 3D printing, etc.
These new technologies / treatments will not only help treat hitherto untreatable conditions, but will also be far safer than current treatment protocols.
Proactive Healthcare, less Sickcare: the focus will shift to prevention rather than sickcare. Developments, as highlighted above, will allow Doctors to identify and take precautionary action against a number of potential health threats. Doctors will follow a holistic protocol against health threats, which will include simple surgeries, drugs, regenerative medicines, supplements, and various lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, sleep and soft health factors like meditation, being socially active, etc.
Sickcare (which is the current norm) will mainly shift to critical cases.
On demand healthcare / Telemedicine: thanks to AI, 5G, blockchain, cloud based electronic medical record keeping, health monitoring (HM) devices, as a patient, you will be able to see a Doctor, on demand (virtually). Telemedicine will change the way medicine is practised. As a patient, you will be able to access the best Doctors in the world and at a time of your convenience, all in a most cost effective manner, and from your existing location!
Imagine the huge leap in availability and quality of medical care available to us as patients from any remote corner of the world. The benefit of telemedicine, especially in emergency situations, will be amazing.
Precision medicine: this is "a new approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person." This approach will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in which groups of people. This will be possible only due to the AI, genetics testing, big data, ML, HM devices, etc.
It is in contrast to a one-size-fits-all approach, in which disease treatment and prevention strategies are developed for the average person, with less consideration for the differences between individuals. Molecular profiling and the use of therapies that target a specific disease’s genetic traits are the two pillars of this approach. In oncology, precision medicine approaches have shown tremendous promise in breast cancer, lung cancer and certain leukemia subtypes. Obviously this approach vastly improves healthcare.
Anti ageing and age reversal will enter the mainstream: ageing will start getting greater recognition and acceptance as the ultimate disease, allowing medical solutions to emerge, which will combat ageing and help us resolve many age related diseases. This shift and greater acceptance into the mainstream will alter the course of healthcare from here onwards!
Age reversal will be accepted as a mainstream objective pursued by a growing number of us.
Together, this will greatly improve our health focus and allow us to lead a more active, healthy, long and disease free life.
In other words, mainstream healthcare is going to transform beyond recognition in a few years time. We can expect an approximate 10 year jump in our life expectancy purely due to the way in which our healthcare will be provided in the near future! At our end, we need to keep abreast with the amazing new developments in this field, as we will have to play responsible partners, with our doctor in our healthcare.
In five to ten years’ time, we will look back at the treatment of ageing and disease as being practised today and will term it as being quite naïve, at best!
I am eagerly looking forward to the dawn of this new era in healthcare, for this will only be the beginning of a spectacular new era for mankind.
What do you think?
Akkshay Mehta
(Age Reversal Evangelist)
This blog is my effort to inspire you with the latest developments in the space of healthspan, lifespan and age reversal. In simple English! Do share and Stay tuned.
I would love to hear from you. I can be reached at mehtaakkshay@gmail.com