To doctors and nurses working 75 years ago, when Britain’s National Health Service was founded, a contemporary ward can be unrecognizable. Fast forward to the long run and hospitals will likely look very different again. Here are among the changes you will probably see in the approaching years.
Fully autonomous surgical robots
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are developing a surgical robot able to performing operations fully autonomously. The robot is provided with 3D vision and a machine learning algorithm that permits it to plan and adapt during operations. Last yr, a robot called Intelligent, autonomous tissue robot—performed a laparoscopic procedure on pig tissue models, successfully suturing the ends of the pig intestine.
Smart toilets for disease monitoring and detection
In March 2023, smart home company Withings announced U scana pebble-shaped 90mm urine evaluation device that attaches to the bathroom bowl, from where it monitors urine biomarkers akin to ketone and vitamin C levels. The device, which runs for 3 months between charges, can even track women’s monthly hormonal fluctuations , measuring the extent of luteinizing hormone and pH.
Therapy in virtual reality
IN test published in a medical journal The name of the scientific medical journal, researchers from the University of Oxford and medical technology company Oxford VR found that VR therapy was simpler than standard therapy in reducing the symptoms of patients with agoraphobia. The therapy, called gameChange, involves placing patients in a simulated environment, akin to a coffee shop or bus, and is currently getting used on the Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust.
Organs printed in 3D
Last February, a girl from San Antonio, Texas received a 3D-printed implant of her right outer ear. The ear was made using cartilage cells taken from her left ear, which were then multiplied by billions of copies and eventually printed on 3DBio Therapeutics’ GMPrint bioprinter. It was the primary implant of its kind, but many labs all over the world have also successfully printed skin, bones and mini organs on 3D printers.
Non-contact monitoring
A team of Australian and Iraqi engineers have developed a monitor that may measure a patient’s blood pressure without contact. The device first movies the patient from a brief distance for ten seconds, then analyzes the video using a picture processing algorithm that may extract essential health signals from two areas of the brow. The same team has also developed similar non-contact temperature and oxygen saturation monitors.
Environment documentation
More than half one million physicians already use speech recognition software to quickly navigate operating systems and access patient data. in March 2023 Nuance, the Microsoft speech recognition company, has released an updated version of its software that permits healthcare professionals to mechanically generate clinical notes during a patient visit. The software, called DAX Express, uses ambient artificial intelligence and GPT-4 OpenAI.
Portable MRI scanners
Health technology company Hyper-subtle creates Swoop, a conveyable magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Swoop may be transported to the patient’s room, plugged into a normal wall outlet, and used to perform a brain scan in roughly 30 seconds. The scanner uses magnetic fields 25 times weaker than conventional MRI scanners, so the outcomes have lower resolution – but at $250,000, it is also six times cheaper than a full-sized device.
A knife that “feels” bumps
Smart surgical instruments just like the iKnife can detect diseases like cancer in seconds. The device combines an electrosurgical blade with a mass spectrometer and was developed by researchers at Imperial College London. It works by delivering an electrical current to the tissue biopsy and chemically analyzing the smoke coming out of it. In a recent study, iKnife achieved an 89 percent diagnostic accuracy for uterine cancer.
This article appeared within the July/August issue of WIRED UK.
