Hospitals of the future: 3D printed organs and scalpels that detect tumors
It's about much more than having 3D printed organs. Since the Hospital de la Purísima Concepción y Jesús Nazareno,the first hospital on the American continent, was founded in Mexico by Hernán Cortés, between 1523 and 1525 (there is some controversy about the year), the clinic rooms have changed in such a way that today would be totally unrecognizable to any health professional of those times.
And if we think about the future now, hospitals are likely to look very different again relatively soon. These are some of the changes we will see in the coming years.
Fully autonomous surgical robots
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, in Maryland, USA, are developing a surgical robot capable of performing operations completely autonomously.It is equipped with three-dimensional vision and a machine learning algorithm that aprendizaje automático allows it to plan and adapt during a surgical intervention. Last year, the robot, called Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, performed a laparoscopic procedure on porcine tissue models, successfully suturing the ends of a pig intestine.
Smart toilets to monitor and detect diseases
In March 2023, smart home company Withings announced the U-Scan, an oval-shaped urinalysis device, just 90 mm, that can be attached to the toilet bowl, from which it monitors biomarkers in urine. Such as ketone and vitamin C levels. The device, which lasts three months between charges, can also track women's monthly hormonal fluctuations, measuring luteinizing hormone levels and pH.
Virtual reality therapy
In a study published in the medical journal The Lancet, researchers from the University of Oxford and the health technology company Oxford VR found that virtual reality therapy was more effective than traditional therapy in reducing the symptoms of agoraphobic patients. The therapy, called gameChange, places patients in a simulated environment, such as a coffee shop or a bus, and is already being used.
3D printed organs
Last February, a woman in San Antonio, Texas, received a 3D-printed right ear implant.It was made from cartilage cells taken from her left ear, which were multiplied into billions of copies and printed on 3DBio Therapeutics' GMPrint bioprinter.This was the first implant of its type, but several laboratories around the world have also managed to 3D print skin, bones and mini organs.
Contactless monitoring
A team of Australian and Iraqi engineers developed amonitor capable of measuring a patient's blood pressure without contact. The device first videotapes the patient at close range for ten seconds; It then analyzes the video using an image processing algorithm capable of extracting vital signals for health from two regions of the forehead. The same team has also developed similar non-contact monitors for temperature and oxygen saturation.
Environmental documentation
More than half a million doctors already use voice recognition programs to quickly navigate operating systems and access patient records. In March 2023, Microsoft-owned voice recognition company Nuance released an updated version of the software, allowing medical staff to automatically generate clinical notes during a patient consultation. The software called DAX Express, uses GPT-4 de OpenAI.
Portable MRI Scanners
Health technology company Hyperfine makes the Swoop, a portable MRI scanner. The Swoop can be brought into a patient's room, plugged into a regular electrical outlet, and used to perform a brain scan in about 30 seconds. It uses magnetic fields 25 times weaker than conventional MRI scanners, so the results are lower resolution, but at $250,000, it's also six times cheaper than a full-size machine.
A knife that “smells” tumors
Smart surgical instruments,like the iKnife, can detect diseases such as cancer in a matter of seconds.This device, developed by researchers at Imperial College London, combines an electrosurgical blade with a mass spectrometer.It works by applying electrical current to the biopsy tissue and chemically analyzing the smoke that emanates from it. In a recent study, the iKnife achieved a diagnostic accuracy of 89% in uterine cancer..
This article was published in the July/August 2023 issue of the magazine and on WIRED UK. Adapted by Mauricio Serfatty Godoy.
