www.marketwatch.com Open in urlscan Pro
143.204.98.45  Public Scan

Form analysis
0 forms found in the DOM

Text Content

Skip to main content

Advertisement

 * Home
 * Latest News
 * Watchlist
 * Market Data Center
    * U.S.
    * Cryptocurrency
    * Europe
    * Rates
    * Asia
    * Futures
    * Currencies

 * Markets
    * U.S. Markets
    * Canada
    * Europe & Middle East
    * Asia
    * Emerging Markets
    * Latin America
    * Market Data

 * Investing
    * Barron's
    * Best New Ideas
    * Stocks
    * IPOs
    * Mutual Funds
    * ETFs
    * Options
    * Bonds
    * Commodities
    * Currencies
    * Cryptocurrencies
    * Futures
    * Financial Adviser Center
    * Cannabis
    * Newswires

 * Barron's
 * Economy & Politics
    * Washington Watch
    * Inflation
    * Coronavirus
    * The Federal Reserve
    * Economic Report
    * Rex Nutting
    * U.S. Economic Calendar
    * Coronavirus Recovery Tracker

 * Personal Finance
    * The Moneyist
    * Spending & Saving
    * Retirement
    * TaxWatch
    * Credit Cards
    * Careers
    * Travel
    * Real Estate
    * Real Estate Listings

 * Retirement
    * Best New Ideas in Retirement
    * Estate Planning
    * Help Me Retire
    * FIRE
    * Taxes
    * Social Security
    * Real Estate
    * Retirement Calculator
    * NewRetirement Planner
    * Where Should I Retire
    * Best Places

 * How to Invest
 * Virtual Stock Exchange
 * Video
    * SectorWatch
    * The Moneyist
    * Getting to Work With
    * Love & Money
    * Explainomics
    * Good Company

 * Podcasts
 * Live Events
 * Picks
    * Food & Wine
    * Home & Kitchen
    * Health & Fitness
    * Fashion & Beauty
    * Loans & Mortgages
    * Money
    * Travel
    * Gifts
    * Technology
    * Real Estate
    * Amazon Prime Day
    * Black Friday
    * Guides

 * Opinion
 * Investor's Business Daily
    * Leaderboard
    * SwingTrader
    * MarketSmith
    * IBDLive

 * Newsletter Center
 * Research & Tools
    * Watchlist
    * Mortgage Calculator
    * Multiple Quotes Tool
    * Stock Screener
    * Earnings Calendar
    * Market Screener
    * IPO Calendar
    * Short Interest
    * Premarket Screener
    * Options Calendar
    * After Hours Screener
    * Currency Tools
    * Mutual Fund Screener
    * Upgrades & Downgrades
    * Mutual Fund Comparison
    * Economic Calendar
    * Where Should I Retire?
    * Savings Accounts
    * Retirement Planner
    * CDs
    * Mortgage Rates

Sign Up Log In
 * Profile Settings
 * Watchlist
 * Email & Alerts
 * Games


MARKETWATCH SITE LOGO A LINK THAT BRINGS YOU BACK TO THE HOMEPAGE.

 * Latest
 * Coronavirus
 * Watchlist
 * Markets
 * Investing
 * Barron's
 * Personal Finance
 * Economy
 * Retirement
 * How to Invest
 * Video Center
 * Live Events
 * MarketWatch Picks
 * More
   Latest Coronavirus Watchlist Markets Investing Barron's Personal Finance
   Economy Retirement How to Invest Video Center Live Events MarketWatch Picks


 * Account Settings
 * Log In
 * Sign Up


Advertisement



Advertisement
 1. Home
 2. Industries
 3. Health Care
 4. Best New Ideas in Health Care


BEST NEW IDEAS IN HEALTH CARE


THE TOP 5 TECHNOLOGIES THAT WILL CHANGE HEALTH CARE OVER THE NEXT DECADE

Published: Feb. 25, 2020 at 10:41 a.m. ET
By

DR. BERTALAN MESKO

  comments


DR. BERTALAN MESKO, AKA THE MEDICAL FUTURIST, SAYS WITH ADVANCEMENTS IN
EXOSKELETON TECHNOLOGY, AI’S EVER-INCREASING IMPORTANCE IN HEALTH CARE, AND
TECHNOLOGIES LIKE 5G AND QUANTUM COMPUTING SOON GOING MAINSTREAM, THERE’S MUCH
TO BE EXCITED ABOUT


Illustration by Doug Chayka
 * Email icon
 * Facebook icon
 * Twitter icon
 * Linkedin icon
 * Flipboard icon

 * Print icon
 * Resize icon

The past decade was about the rise of digital health technology and patient
empowerment. The next decade will be about artificial intelligence, the use of
health sensors and the so-called Internet of Healthy Things and how it could
improve millions of lives.

The cultural transformation of health care we call digital health has been
changing the hierarchy in care into an equal-level partnership between patients
and physicians as 21st century technologies have started breaking down the ivory
tower of medicine. But these milestones are nothing compared with what is about
to become reality.

With advancements in exoskeleton technology, AI’s ever-increasing importance in
health care, and technologies like 5G and quantum computing soon going
mainstream, there’s much to be excited about.


Advertisement

Here are the five biggest themes for health and medicine for the next 10 years.

Artificial intelligence in medicine

Developments in artificial intelligence will dominate the next decade. Machine
learning is a method for creating artificial narrow intelligence — narrow refers
to doing one task extremely well — and a field of computer science that enables
computers to learn without being explicitly programmed, building on top of
computational statistics and data mining. The field has different types: it
could be supervised, unsupervised, semi-supervised or reinforcement learning,
among others. It has an unprecedented potential to transform health-care
processes and medical tasks in the future — and it has already started its
invisible revolution.



If we consider how AlphaGo, the AI developed by Google’s DeepMind lab, beat
world champion Lee Sedol at the classic Chinese game Go by coming up with
inventive moves that took experts by surprise, we can get a glimpse at what AI
can hold for health care. Such moves were made possible by the combination of
neural networks and reinforcement learning that this AI uses. This enabled the
software to operate without the restrictions of human cognitive limitations,
devise its own strategy and output decisions that baffled experts.

We can expect to see the same surprises in medical settings. Imagine new drugs
designed by such algorithms; high-level analysis of tens of millions of studies
for a diagnosis; or drug combinations nobody has thought of before. When applied
to medicine, an algorithm trained via reinforcement learning could discover
treatments and cures for conditions when human medical professionals could not.
Cracking the reasoning behind such unconventional and novel approaches will
herald the true era of art in medicine.

In global health, for example, an algorithm can provide a reliable map of future
measles outbreak hot spots. It uses statistics on measles vaccination rates and
disease outbreaks from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well
as non-traditional health data, including social media and a huge range of
medical records. That’s just one example, but the field is already buzzing with
smart algorithms that can facilitate the search for new drug targets; improve
the speed of clinical trials or spot tumors on computed tomography (CT) scans.


Advertisement

However, while experts believe that AI will not replace medical professionals,
it also seems true that medical professionals who use AI will replace those who
don’t.



A myriad of health sensors

Medical technology went through an amazing development in the 2010s, and there’s
now no single square centimeter of the human body without quantifiable data. For
example, AliveCor’s Kardia and Apple Watch measure electrocardiogram and detect
atrial fibrillation with high sensitivity. The EKO Core digital stethoscope
records heart and lung sounds as a digital stethoscope, while blood pressure is
monitored with the Omron Blood Pressure Smartwatch, the MOCAcare pocket sensor,
and blood pressure cuff, the iHealth Clear, the Skeeper, a pocket cardiologist,
or the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor, and of course, dozens of traditional
blood pressure cuffs.

There are dozens of health trackers for respiration, sleep, and, of course,
movement. And while researchers can’t decipher your dreams yet — they are
working on it, alongside figuring out all kinds of brain activity. For example,
through EEG. That’s a method that records electrical activity in the brain using
electrodes attached externally to the scalp. The NeuroSky biosensor and the Muse
headband use it to understand the mind better and in the latter case allow for
more effective meditation. As you see, there’s not much left unmeasured in your
body — and it will even intensify in the future. For example, we expect digital
tattoos to become commercially available within five years, which will not only
measure the majority of the above-mentioned vital signs, but they will do so
continuously. These tiny sensors will notify us when something is about to go
wrong and we will need medical advice or intervention.


Advertisement

Moreover, with developments in 3-D printing as well as circuit-printing
technologies, flexible electronics and materials, applying so-called digital
tattoos or electronic tattoos on the skin for some days or even weeks became
possible.

Made of flexible, waterproof materials impervious to stretching and twisting
coupled with tiny electrodes, digital tattoos are able to record and transmit
information about the wearer to smartphones or other connected devices. While
these are only in use in research projects, they could allow health-care experts
to monitor and diagnose critical health conditions such as heart arrhythmia,
heart activities of premature babies, sleep disorders and brain activities
noninvasively. Moreover, by tracking vital signs 24 hours a day, without the
need for a charger, it is especially suited for following patients with high
risk of stroke, for example. Although we are not there yet, there are certain
promising solutions on the market such as MC10’s BioStampRC Sensor.

Quantum computing puts medical decision-making on a new level

In 2019, Google claimed “quantum supremacy” and made the cover of Nature
magazine. One example of how this technology will have a major impact on the
health-care sector is quantum computing taking medical decision-making to a
whole new level and even augmenting it with special skills. What if such
computers could offer perfect decision support for doctors? They could skim
through all the studies at once, they could find correlations and causations
that the human eye would never find, and they might stumble upon diagnoses or
treatment options that doctors could have never figured out by themselves.


Advertisement

At the very endpoint of this development, quantum computers could create an
elevated version of PubMed, where information would reside in the system but not
in the traditional written form — it would reside in qubits of data as no one
except the computer would “read” the studies anymore.

In addition, the applications of quantum computing to health care are manifold,
ranging from much faster drug design to quicker and cheaper DNA sequencing and
analysis to reinforced security over personal medical data. While the technology
does hold such promises, we still have to be patient before practical solutions
can be implemented in medicine. However, with continued progress in this area,
even though quantum computing has been something from a science fiction novel,
this decade will see the first such computer used in the clinical practice too.

Chatbots as the first line of care

Symptom checkers that function on the same principle as chatbots are already
available, free of charge. However, these rely on the user inputting symptoms
and complaints manually. We yearn for one that can make predictions and
suggestions based on a user’s data, like sleep tracking, heart rate and activity
collected via wearables. With such features, those bots can help users make
healthier choices without having to drag themselves to their doctor.

There was a “Black Mirror” episode titled “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too” that
featured an incredibly smart and emotional chatbot that had human-like
conversations with the character. Think about having a similar personalized
chatbot that’s accessible via your smart device and with additional health and
lifestyle features. This chatty virtual being can wake you up at the appropriate
time based on your sleep pattern and advise you to take your antihistamines as
the pollen concentration is particularly high during your commute that day,
before you even get out of bed. It can even recommend what you should consume
for each meal based on your nutrigenomic profile. It could find the best words
for you to motivate you to go to the gym. It could find the best jokes that help
you get into a good mood. But would you rather bend to the rules of an AI,
essentially forgoing your freedom of choice, than experience life based more on
your own will?

5G serving the whole ecosystem of digital health

5G networks will enable data to be downloaded at more than 1 gigabit per second,
allowing for downloads 10 to 100 times faster than the currently available 4G
services. 4G networks can only serve around a thousand devices within a square
kilometer, while 5G can serve a million. It will make the era of the Internet of
Things (IoT) possible by connecting a huge amount of health trackers with
laptops, smartphones and many more digital devices. There will be no connection
issues or latency, as the trackers will be able to work in harmony while getting
the most out of our data.

Such a boost will allow for more reliable communication, which is a must in
areas like telesurgery, remote consultation and remote monitoring. With bigger
bandwidth and faster connection, there might be a boost in wearables as health
IoT networks become more stable and reliable, and further help with patient
engagement in relation to their health.

Major applications of 5G are expected to be apparent starting in 2021.

Dr. Bertalan Mesko, Ph.D., is The Medical Futurist and director of The Medical
Futurist Institute, analyzing how science fiction technologies can become
reality in medicine and healthcare. As a geek physician with a Ph.D. in
genomics, he is a keynote speaker and an Amazon Top-100 author.




READ NEXT


READ NEXT


ETHER CONTINUES ITS RECORD RUN, TOPS $4,700 FOR FIRST TIME

The world's second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which runs on the
Ethereum blockchain, was recently at $4,737 on Sunday night, according to Kraken
data.


MORE ON MARKETWATCH

 * Barron's: AMC, PayPal, Disney, Palantir, Coinbase, and Other Stocks to Watch
   This Week
 * Cannabis stocks rise on federal marijuana measure prospects
 * PayPal’s Venmo strikes new partnership with Amazon; earnings outlook comes up
   short
 * Barron's: The Twitterverse Has Voted: Elon Musk Should Sell 10% of His Tesla
   Stock


Advertisement
Community Guidelines • FAQs

Advertisement

Advertisement

PARTNER CENTER


Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

MOST POPULAR


Advertisement

WHAT SOME SAY IS BEHIND CRYPTO’S RECORD RALLY TO $3 TRILLION, AS BITCOIN HITS
NEW HIGH

THESE ARE THE NEXT THREE MEGA-CAP TECH STOCKS YOU’LL BE HEARING MORE ABOUT

‘HOUSEHOLDS WITH A MEMBER SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION EXHIBIT STRIKING DIFFERENCES
IN SHOPPING BEHAVIOR’

WHY THE NEW TAX LAW CAUSED A 'PERFECT STORM' FOR ROTH IRA CONVERSIONS

‘I USE CREDIT CARDS FOR EVERYTHING’: I’M 36, EARN $62,000 AND HAVE $290,000 IN
RETIREMENT SAVINGS. MY WIFE IS A STAY-AT-HOME MOM. ARE WE DOING OK?


Advertisement




PARTNER CONTENT




PARTNER CONTENT



Back to Top
MarketWatch logoGo to the homepage
Copyright © 2021 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved.
By using this site you agree to the Subscriber Agreement & Terms of Use, 
Privacy Notice, and Cookie Notice.
 * Facebook
 * Twitter
 * Linkedin
 * 

 * MARKETWATCH

 * Customer Center
 * Contact Us
 * Newsroom Roster
 * Virtual Stock Exchange
 * BigCharts
 * Copyright Policy
 * Manage Notifications

 * COMPANY

 * Dow Jones
 * Code of Conduct
 * Corrections
 * Reprints & Licensing
 * Your Ad Choices
 * Corporate Subscriptions

 * DOW JONES NETWORK

 * The Wall Street Journal
 * Barron's
 * Financial News London
 * realtor.com
 * Mansion Global

Intraday Data provided by FACTSET and subject to terms of use. Historical and
current end-of-day data provided by FACTSET. All quotes are in local exchange
time. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported
through Nasdaq only. Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange
requirements.



Advanced Search Submit entry for keyword results

Advertisement



LISTINGS




COLUMNS




AUTHORS




TOPICS





PRIVATE

No results found