Stay ConnectedIn the audio companion to his new book, The Future of Medicine, Dr. Stephen Schimpff explains in layman’s terms how megatrends in medicine are forever changing the healthcare you and your family recieves.
The Future of Medicine is the only podcast identify megatrends in: genomics, stem cells, vaccines, medical devices, imaging equipment, amazing new approaches in the operating room, digitizing medical records, ancient healing practices, and health safety.
Copyright: © Copyright Stephen C. Shimpff, M.D.
"The electronic medical record will arrive over the next decade, but inparts and pieces. It will become your medical record, not the doctor's or hospital's. Your record may be on a a chip in your pocket or instantly available from the internet."
Full digitization of medical information – which will still take 5 to ten years or more to achieve - will allow access to medical information at any time, at any place, and in so doing will greatly improve the quality and safety of medical care—your medical care. Digitization will assist continuity of care by providing the right information at the right time to allow for the correct choices in care. Telemedicine and distance medicine will prevail.
Robotics will become as important in surgery as industrial robots have become to manufacturing. They can overcome certain obstacles or barriers, such as accessibility to certain tissues (small incisions), distance (telesurgery), dexterity (the six degrees of freedom or a wristlike motion), speed and they do not get tired. They offer the potential to transcend certain human limitations to increase consistency and quality.
Tomorrow's operating rooms will be highly dependent upon breathtakingly superb images that will allow the surgeon to know - in advance - what to expect during a specific individual's surgery. And simulators will be universally used by trainees before ever being allowed into the OR. The measure will be competence, not just numbers of cases done. Better surgery and better training.
As medicine advances, there will be less need for surgery and the surgery done will be much less invasive. Some procedures traditionally done in the operating room will now be done in the radiology department using catheters rather than scalpels, in shorter time frames and will less recuperation time needed.
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The OR of the Future has four major megatrends. Fewer procedure will need to be done. Many procedures will be done outside the OR. The OR will have much more functionality. The OR will depend on new technologies such as simulators, image guidance and robotic assistance.
Nanomedicine - Ever more small devices are being created now with sizes so small that they cannot be seen with a microscope -- but they can help in diagnosis and treatment in ways never before available. For example, a nanodevice an find a tumor cell, attach to it, show where it is on an image and then deliver a drug to destroy it.
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Smaller and more powerful devices with very long battery life have been created to help control the heart beat, improve heart pumping, decrease the number of epileptic seizures and even decrease depression for those not well treated by drugs. Soon there will be insulin pumps that can sense the body's blood sugar level and inject just the right amount of insulin -- and many more to come.
What we used to call "X-rays" are dramatically changing with superb anatomic images that show some of the smallest details of our organs and the ability to "see" actual function within tissues and cells. And they are not just used for diagnosis anymore but for actual therapy of problems formerly treated in the operating room. With all of the information in digital format, images can be viewed at anytime, at anyplace and by any (authorized) person.
Expect new vaccines to prevent not only infections but also to prevent and treat many chronic diseases like multiple sclerosis, coronary artery disease, and Alzheimer’s. And their will be vaccines designed specifically for an individual – custom tailoring again – to treat residual cancer.
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