This is stated in the “TECHMeets Report: Towards a humanitarian use of technology”, prepared by the International University of Valencia (VIU)which analyzes the impact of technology on the health sector and also on the industrial, business and environmental sectors.
For this reason, it collects not only data like those of the ÍPatent index 2021 of the European Patent Officewhich indicates that Spain registered a new record of European patent applications of national origin, achieving the highest growth rate of the last ten years (8.9%), but also 15 technological trends that claim to revolutionize the future of the development of the business fabric.
Regarding the health sector, the report points out that technology is being essential to speed up the work of doctors, as well as the prevention of certain diseases, and that the computation and the artificial intelligenceadded to big datathey are being fundamental for the processing of information, allowing an early diagnosis.
It also points to the development of the personalized medicine as “a result of the great boom of the genetic sequencing technologies” that help in accurate diagnosis, based on the sequencing of the person’s DNA to obtain all the genetic data.
Along with these, he also mentions the appropriate therapies for each patient and the treatment of digital data to “determine and predict the patient’s situation based on the effect that a mutation has at the phenotypic level”.
And he points out that “the health crisis resulting from covid-19 has boosted the use of digitization in all sectors”.
Medicine has benefited significantly from the evolution in medical images that includes specialties such as radiology, ultrasound, tomography or magnetic resonance imaging.
Thanks to them, the text adds, tiny parts of the body can be observed, with great resolution.
However, existing technological development means that more and more hospitals are opting for two types of disruptions that not only speed up the work of doctors, but also the way they analyze injuries and, therefore, their decisions, promoting prevention against certain future diseases.
Health and technology: disruptions
The aforementioned disruptions are:
Computational Image: this is a technique that combines data acquisition and processing to create the image of an object through indirect means to obtain improved resolution and additional information such as 3D reconstruction, i.e. in three dimensions .
Thanks to it, the health sector can extract an image through a computer and allow the doctor to make decisions after knowing in detail the state of the injury, what it is made of, how aggressive it is or what are its main components .
Artificial Intelligence: they are machine learning or deep learning development algorithms that make it possible to have more and more information of higher quality, as well as more accurate and robust, in a short period of time.
This helps that a larger number of patients can be studied and, at the same time, that it is done in a more reproducible way.
“Computing and artificial intelligence, added to big data, are fundamental for the processing of information, allowing that, by having useful information, doctors are able, without the need to touch the patient, to know with enormous precision and with a resolution in microns, how the tissues are organized, the quality or the alterations and anomalies that are occurring, thus enhancing the early and precise diagnosis of certain pathologies with the most appropriate therapeutic option”.
LIVE report
The development of personalized medicine is the result of the great boom in genetic sequencing technologies, thanks to which it has become possible to analyze the genetic profile, your lifestyle or which factors increase the risk of suffering from a disease .
Devices, mappings and clones
This preventive or predictive medicine, in addition to being personalized, is currently being achieved thanks to important diagnostic technologies such as:
Genetic sequencing technologies: digital clone
This technological solution, based on artificial intelligence and whose growth in the next five years is estimated at more than 41%, aims to recreate the digital clone of an organ or even the body whole of the patient, from millions of personal data that are collected through various health examinations that are updated on a recurring basis.
Precision medicine can take advantage of this technology to prevent a disease, achieve a more accurate diagnosis, and even to test certain therapies and observe how a patient responds to a certain drug or treatment.
Wearables
These are intelligent electronic devices that are placed on some part of the human body in order to monitor some physiological variables of the patient in real time.
Thanks to them, the patient becomes an active subject in the control of his own state of health, supported by 4.0 technologies such as artificial intelligence that provide information on blood pressure, sleep patterns or sedentary behavior.
In this way, early diagnoses, personalized treatment or managing chronic diseases can be made.
Miniaturization of devices
This breakthrough consists in the creation of small wireless sensors that are implantable in living cells of the human body to monitor the health status of the patient, through the changes that the cell undergoes over time.
The result of this innovation is the ability to prevent and define the most appropriate therapy.
Computational mapping system
The development of this non-invasive technology serves to produce a map of the heart in real time without the need for patient intervention.
This is used to predict a cardiac anomaly, as this interactive map maps the critical points of arrhythmia anywhere in the heart.
As a conclusion, the VIU document on health and technology defends that technology must be put at the service of people, to face the digital emergency “by adopting a perspective that places the human being at the focus of technological development, and all this, with a social, inclusive, humanistic and sustainable vision so that the digital transition strengthens human rights”.