medicine in 2032

im looking into future technology for my ATL and ive gotten on to medical tech. any opinions as to how medical technology will advance between now and the year 2032? what i currently have ideas for are:


  • cybernetic prosthetics: kinda like ghost in the shell, though probably not as advanced, more in the way of really responsive artificial limbs and efficient prosthetic organs. one GITS-like tech could be early cyberbrains, which would be rare and increase the effectiveness of a human's skills all around, but also make them vulnerable to computer viruses and cause real damage from an immaterial source
  • genetic engineering: limited due to costs and maybe ethics, would entail custom-designing cells and "minor" modifications like taste bud tweaking, digestive improvements, nerve mapping to reduce the chance of paralysis in back and neck injuries, and possibly "security nodes" to give doctors easy access to an individual's medical database at any time. there could also be genetically engineered plants that grow faster and produce numerous products like a generic but nutritious "food paste" like what people in the 50s imagined
what im mainly asking about is what kinds of diseases you all think would be cured or close to being cured by the year 2032, based on OTL medical technology from right now
 
what im mainly asking about is what kinds of diseases you all think would be cured or close to being cured by the year 2032, based on OTL medical technology from right now

To be frank I am not certain any "diseases" will be cured, since diseases often have several different causes, and preventing them all is damn difficult. The easy diseases have been cured or identified (like smoking leads to lung cancer) - it is the difficult that are left.

Some big trends, however, are:

Personlised medicine. You get a treatment adapted to YOU, not to what worked best on an average for 63 294 persons. Gender, "race", age and other medical history will come into play.

Testing for everyting, in real time. Your cell phone (or the future version of cell phone) will check your health and send the results to your doctor - or 911 if it detects a heart failure. And if it detects antrax it will call homeland security. Visits to the doctor will mean testing for disease 1-843 - but it will only take minutes and cost some dollars.

Children will not be designed gentically, but screened for a lot of unwanted diseases. Some rich megastars will bragg about having designed their children like bragging about their yachts.

More outpatient treatments. A hospital today have very few patients staying over night/longer periods than they had 1980 - and this trend will continue.

Telemedicine. Since about 100% will have Internet access on HD level by 2032 it won't be neccessary to physically visit the doctor. A face to face conversation while you scan yourself (with some scannar bought at Wal-Mart for 29.95) and the doctor see the results. This means that you can "visit the doctor" during a coffe break at work - and that means earlier detection of many problems.

Psych meds. Psychotherapy will be more or less dead, since all facts shows that it is useless (or rahter: not more effective than talking to an understanding neighbour). Instead new forms of psychological treatments, following cognitive behavioral therapy and adapted for personal medicine and testing. Mental problems will be fewer than today.

Interactive patients. We will discuss our diseases, medicines and doctors like we discuss restaurants and cars today. Sites like webmd.com will be common.

Biohacking: Some pioneers or idiots will play Frankenstein. The results will be between "Run for you lives" and "Why didn't anyone think of this before". Probably more of the later than the first. Big etical dilemmas that most people will ignore.

Other stuff

Bioterrorism: Nope. Will be early detected by scanners and treated.

Malaria and other diseases will be effectivly exterminated. These parts of the world will have a huge upswing in life expectancy, GDP and therefore less emigration.

Pharma industry: Will interesting enough not do well in the future. The easy cures are done and personalised medicine can use the existing medicines in new ways.

The world will be older, since lifespan will be longer and fewer children will be born. This will have huge impact on politics. A slow, silent war between the generations is possible where the younger generations "lits out", gathering in certain countries.
 
Stem cells this week were injected into a stroke patient's brain and he was said to be somewhat better. If this proves a viable treatment, I could see deaths, and severe disablements following a stroke, being reduced increasingly over the next 2 decades

Voluntary Euthanasia will probably eventually win acceptance, on the same lines as the death trail to Switzerland - it may even be accepted as a basic human right, since if you have the right to live, why not have the right to die?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
I mostly see gradual improvements across the board. Life expectancy for cancer patients, heart attack survival rates, treatments delaying conditions like Alzheimer´s and Parkinson´s - all those and many others will gradually get better. Life expectancy in general should also rise through this.

I also hope that a great many medical treatments become more affordable for the great mass of people, through development of cheaper treatment methods and medicines.
 
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