Anticipate Issues As Possible Before They Arise

Technology and medicine have an almost symbiotic relationship. While eating right and exercising regularly are all a person really needs to do in order to maintain baseline homeostasis, that’s harder and harder in today’s modern world. We are expected to be available to our technological devices 24/7.

Where is your smartphone right now? Is that the media device you’re using to read this very writing? Or is the device in your pocket as you peruse a laptop or a tablet? Likely enough it’s within five feet of your person and has been since you bought it.

Also, you’re probably not walking to work, or riding your bicycle. In all likelihood you’re either on a bus, a train, driving, or carpooling. And when you get to work, unless you’re in construction, a physical trainer, or working in a field somewhere, the totality of your responsibilities likely doesn’t do anything to induce physical activity. You’re probably behind a desk.

Even if you’re trying to eat right and exercise regularly, you’re going to find your body responding to today’s technologically saturated environment. This is a pretty big healthcare challenge you need to anticipate. But it’s a mixed challenge because there’s a blessing on the other side of it.

The Other Side

Even though technology has led to some level of health issues physically and cognitively, it has arguably produced many more advances which help overcome healthcare challenges. Prosthetics are making it so that people who have lost limbs can almost live life as they did before. Robotics are combining to make this more feasible than ever.

Advances have been made which facilitate sight for the blind, and hearing for the deaf. You can find hearing solutions at NH Hearing Institute that are top-of-the-line, and feature some cutting-edge medical tech. Hearing aids are becoming integrated biologically. Have you ever heard the term “cybernetic organism”?

The truth is, mankind is in a period of transition where cyborgs are actually among us. A cybernetic organism is a biology dependent on technology. An older gentleman with a pacemaker is, by that definition, a cyborg! Now, this is said tongue-in-cheek, but it’s considerable. Body modification and management are transcending science and becoming an art.

A great example of technology, aesthetic sensibility, and medicine combining to a better life in terms of physicality is “CoolSculpting”. Without invasive surgery or pervasive downtime, fat can be “Frozen away”. CoolScultping at the Warmuth Institute is providing body reshaping options which are downright staggering in this regard.

CRISPR And The Future

Then you’ve got “CRISPR”, which is technology that is literally used to re-shape DNA. CRISPR is DNA editing. Hybridization, cloning, designer babies, and genetic sequencing are all realities in today’s world that exponentially expand in ways which keep pace with technology. Accordingly, healthcare challenges that were impossible to overcome are now on the horizon. Remember that scene in the film The Fifth Element where doctors use the tissue to essentially recreate an entire human being using their 25th-century technology?

The truth is, theoretically, we’ve got the knowledge; it’s just that the mechanical tech isn’t there, and the nature of consciousness is yet to be understood. The AI event horizon is knocking on that door, though. Once computer consciousness transcends that which is human, the medical implications will be staggering.

With 3D printing and AI, we are swiftly approaching that event horizon. With modern backup redundancy strategies applied to a healthcare program, it may be possible that in fifty years’ time, you won’t be able to die! When you go to sleep, a computer may back up your mind to a cloud-based server.

Your body may be made of synthetic flesh, and if it dies, a new one is printed off with your mind uploaded inside. The worst you’ll lose is a day. A terrifying science fiction possibility, but dear reader, it is knocking on humanity’s back door even now.

A Strange New World

So at the end of the day, technology remains a double-edged sword. On one hand, it makes it possible to overcome common conditions which were—and in many under-developed nations still are—entirely beyond humanity’s scope to overcome. On the other, such technology is rapidly transitioning humanity into a new era.