Technology promises to herald astonishing advances in healthcare, but delegates to the Knowledge Summit 2016 were told that the rapid pace of change posed ethical and legislative challenges.<\/p>\n
Organised by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (MBRF) \u2013 member of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives \u2013 the third-annual summit in Dubai from December 5-7 at the Grand Hyatt.<\/p>\n
Moderated by Dr. Jamal Mohammed Al Kaabi, Director of Social Development Sector, Office of the Executive Committee, Executive Council of Abu Dhabi, the panel session, titled Knowledge and the Future of Health <\/em>explored sweeping changes we can expect from scientific advances.<\/p>\n Daniel Kraft, a Stanford- and Harvard-trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur and innovator, kicked off by saying: \u201cTechnology will change whole premise of healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn the US,\u201d he said, \u201cmost of healthcare spending is on 20% of the population with chronic conditions.\u201d Technology, he said, offers a route out of that, with wearables and monitoring Apps introducing a new field of preventative medicine. \u201cSmartphones today are healthcare platforms,\u201d he said. \u201cThey connect the dots between doctors, between patients and pharma.\u201d<\/p>\n But he warned that human minds still struggle with the sheer pace of change \u2026 the world is actually moving at an exponential rate, but \u00a0we\u2019re still looking at it as linear. \u00a0He said the next big step would be a full \u201cUberisation\u201d of healthcare. \u201cUber did not invent GPS, or online payment, or anything else that makes it function,\u201d he said. \u201cUber saw what was already there, and simply connected the dots.\u201d<\/p>\n Uberisation, he said, was already already here. \u201cIn the US ,there are 5 uber-style healthcare Apps. You press a button, a doctor shows up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Wearables, he said are already evolving into \u201cinsidables\u201d, such as contact lenses that measure blood sugar. Then there are \u2018trainables\u2019 to correct things like posture; \u2018shockables\u2019\u00a0 that provide direct input; \u201chearables\u201d, \u201cringables\u201d and more. \u00a0All this, he said, is creating terabytes and terabytes of data.\u00a0 \u201cThe big challenge, is what do we do with this data?\u201d<\/p>\n He said a streamlining is inevitable \u2013 we won\u2019t want 10 devices, or 10 apps. They need to be integrated \u2013 \u201cIn a car engine we have dozens of sensors, but the only one we care about is the check engine light,\u201d he said. This data, once streamlined, can integrate with our healthcare records, and even with automated homes \u2013 providing you with your own \u201ccheck engine\u201d light, or telling you to watch your weight, or when to take medication.<\/p>\n Ultimately, he said, advanced artificial intelligence will be monitoring all these data streams, and making accurate diagnoses on your behalf. \u201cArtificial intelligence won\u2019t replace doctors, but it will augment them,\u201d he assured. As for the data itself, he said that ownership could prove to be a legal challenge. \u201cI personally argue that we should all own our personal health data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Hugh Herr, Associate Professor, Media of Arts and Sciences, Health Sciences and Technology, MIT Media Lab, agreed that legislation was among the biggest challenges brought about by the fast pace of change in medicine. Regulation would struggle to keep pace with advances, not just in terms of licencing new drugs and technologies, but also on the ethical side.<\/p>\n His expertise is bionics \u2013\u00a0the integration of living tissue and synthetic devices, which he said had the capability to fundamentally change what it means to be human \u2013 something that society may be unprepared for. \u201cBionics is the design of constructs attached to or inside the body that extend human capability,\u201d he said. This can mean restoring abilities to the disabled, but it can also take \u00a0humans way beyond their normal capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Herr speaks from experience: a double amputee who lost both legs below the knee in a climbing accident, he says he has \u201chacked\u201d his body to give him capabilities far beyond normal people. \u201cI now climb better than I did when I had legs,\u201d he says. \u201cOther climbers have threatened to chop their own legs off to compete with me better!\u201d<\/p>\n He said advances in bionics were along four key areas: the brain\u2019s inputs and outputs, which promise treatments for blindness, among other conditions; the body\u2019s inputs and outputs, which promise significant advances in treating paralysis; bionics, where major advances are being made in \u2018wearable robots\u2019 and exoskeletons; and organ and tissue repair, which promise complete regeneration of spinal cord damage for example.<\/p>\n Technology has freed me from the shackles of disability,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cAnd I firmly believe, in the next decade, we will largely solve paralysis.\u201d<\/p>\n Mohamed Ghoneim, Professor Emeritus of Urology at Mansoura University, Egypt, predicted advances in nanotechnology and biotechnology would transform healthcare. In the nanotechnology field, he cited the pioneering work of the Egyptian-American scientist Mostafa El-Sayed in using gold nano-particles to target, and eliminate, cancer cells.<\/p>\n Robotic surgery, he said, was also being miniaturised, requiring one tiny hole where before a major incision would have been needed. In biotech, he said that healthcare had advanced greatly from the discovery of DNA in the 50s, through to the first genome sequencing in the late 1990s, to the present day, where gene therapies and gene splicing now offer real treatments to conditions ranging from haemophilia to type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n But he said it was stem cells \u2013 and especially \u201c\u201cindividual pluripotent stem cells\u201d that offered the most promise, in everything from tailored treatments to potentially revising aging. \u201cIndividual pluripotent stem cells reverse any human cell back into embryonic cells,\u201d he said. \u201cThen, you can do what you like with them.\u201d<\/p>\n This method offered two major advantages: firstly, by being sourced from the patient there would be no immunosuppression issues; and secondly, by being sourced from any cell, it overcame the ethical questions arising from the use of embryonic stem cells.<\/p>\n \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Technology promises to herald astonishing advances in healthcare, but delegates to the Knowledge Summit 2016 were told that the rapid pace of change posed ethical and legislative challenges. Organised by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (MBRF) \u2013 member of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives \u2013 the third-annual summit in Dubai […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":13641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[879,6],"tags":[691,716,2969],"class_list":["post-13640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthcare","category-insights","tag-data-protection","tag-healthcare","tag-robotic-surgery"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}