Innovations in health care play an essential role for people and all of humanity. TThe development and implementation of the latest technologies in medicine can significantly increase the duration and improve the quality of human life. Innovative technologies in medicine are now emerging at an unprecedented rate. For the successful development of medicine, it is necessary to pay attention to new technologies that can be used to improve equipment and tools. This paper will discuss two medical technological innovations that are significant for the future of a medical organization and how different stakeholders could benefit from them.
The first medical innovation that can be proposed is 3D bioprinting that is continuously being improved. It brought humanity as close as possible to the real synthesis of living tissues that do not differ from those created by nature. The first tissue recreated on such a printer was a fragment of the liver (Alexandrea, 2019). Now developments are underway in terms of creating neurons, internal mucous surfaces, bones, and tendons. Tests for the transplantation of a part of the liver created by using 3D bioprintinghaves already passed, and its results were successful (Alexandrea, 2019). Bioprinting has become a perfect novelty in transplantation and was initially conceived as a method of cell regeneration after severe burns (Alexandrea, 2019). But then the path opened up to more exciting possibilities. 3D printers appeared to play a vital role in regenerative medicine, helping specialists create blood vessel tissue, bones, heart valves, cartilage, artificial skin, and even organs (Chameettachal et al., 2019). The ability to create artificial organs that are not rejected by the body’s immune system could be a revolutionary find that will save millions of lives.
3D printed prostheses are becoming more popular as they are entirely custom-made. Besides, digital functionality allows them to match individual measurements with millimeter accuracy (Yan et al., 2018). This provides an unprecedented level of comfort and mobility for patients and ease-to-use devices for doctors. Significant progress has been made in the use of 3D printing for cancer treatment, stomatology, and other spheres. For instance, scientists have created a fast and inexpensive approach to make facial prostheses for people who had surgery for eye cancer (Hendricks, 2016). Furthermore, using printers can create durable and water-soluble items (Lamichhane et al., 2019). For example, 3D printing can be used to print tablets that contain many chemical elements aimed at a comprehensive cure of a particular disease.
Heart issues that people experience worldwide can also be resolved or at least mitigated slightly with the help of 3-D models. Only in US heart diseases are the leading causes of death for people of different races and ethnicity (“Heart Disease Facts,” 2020). Invasive catheterization that is needed to diagnose blocked or narrowed arteries and complicated methods of improving blood flow, such as stenting, can be avoided using 3-D printing. Charles Taylor, a professor who launchethe a company HeartFlow, helps patients evade invasive diagnostic methods and enhance treatment results (Time staff, 2019). HeartFlow developed creates personalized 3-D models that can move and zoom scenes to imitate different ways to identify a disease on a screen (Time staff, 2019). “By adding the HeartFlow … to our available resources for diagnosing stable coronary disease, we can provide patients with better care as we evaluate risk,” stated a cardiologist at the American College of Cardiology’s annual meeting (Time staff, 2019, para. 11).
The second innovation that can boost medicine and help medical professionals to approach various illnesses is artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most promising technologies in Medtech. AI services can improve diagnostics’ accuracy, automate the doctor’s work, choose the best treatment method, create new medicines, etc. AI is now one of the fastest-growing segments of the global healthcare market: Frost&Sullivan forecasts it will reach $6.6 billion by 2021 (2016).
Due to extensive historical medical data, artificial intelligence can be useful in making a diagnosis and choosing the appropriate treatment, giving the doctor a “third opinion”. With all the available medical information about a particular disease, the AI can analyze it and determine which treatments and medications have been most effective in the history of medical practice. A promising area of application of AI is the analysis of medical images (Ahuja, 2019). The AI system is trained to identify various diseases and pathologies. In this direction, technologies have achieved evident success and, therefore, are already being gradually introduced into clinical practice (Ahuja, 2019). Also, there is great potential for using AI in the development and testing of new drugs. According to some studies, large pharmaceutical companies spend up to $2.6 billion to develop and market a single drug (Sullivan, 2019). Some of the largest pharmaceutical companies, Novartis (2019), and Microsoft opened an AI lab to use “smart” algorithms in the creation of medicines.
Another example of an AI application is the use of an IBM Watson supercomputer in Tokyo to clarify the diagnosis of a 60-year-old patient with leukemia and prescribe successful treatment by comparing the genetic data of millions of research papers (Sanchez, 2019). There are more and more such cases: for example, the Google Health team also reported that the cancer-diagnosing scans based on AI identified 5% more cancer cases and delivered 11% fewer false positives than a control group of six human radiologists when researching lung cancer (Time staff, 2019).
Practice and experience of the doctor may not be enough for the correct diagnosis oThe practicesease. With access to scientific literature and millions of case histories, a neural network developed with AI can quickly classify a case, correlate it with similar situations, and formulate suggestions for a treatment plan (Shahid, 2019). Nevertheless, at the current stage of technology development, AI cannot solve complex tasks, such as creating devices that independently scan a person and prescribe effective treatment. Artificial intelligence has yet to earn its credibility-both from patients and practitioners (Engler, 2020). The majority of people are still skeptical about predictions made by algorithms (Engler, 2020). To overcome this barrier, it is necessary to create a large number of successful cases in the field of computer diagnostics for various medical areas, as well as a lot of work on the formation and observance of ethical principles for the use of AI for the industry.
To make a conclusion, one can say that new technologies in the field of medicine are in constant development, giving humanity hope for longer life, in which there will be no diseases and unpleasant sensations. Unexpected approaches make it possible to give birth to children who previously did not have such an opportunity, cure diseases that were recently considered incurable, prolong youth, and provide humanity confidence in the future.
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