Bio-scanners that tell you everything wrong with your body in seconds.
Ointment that closes wounds instantly.
A single tablet that contains everything your body needs in a week.
Science fiction has always fascinated us, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
In 2024, advances in Medicine have brought our once-fictional ideas closer to reality.
In this post, we’ll be looking at groundbreaking advances so mind-blowing you’ll think we’re living in the world of Star Trek.
#1 Neural Interface: Moving Things With Your Mind
How about a device placed on your brain that translates thoughts into actions?
With this chip in his brain, a paralyzed individual can just think about it, and have his limbs slowly start moving again. Simply by thinking about it.
Elon Musk’s company Neuralink is in the early stages of making this happen. In their trials, they already have a fellow who’s paralyzed from the shoulder down using a computer just like anybody. But he’s not using his hands to move the mouse. He’s using his mind, and the pointer follows wherever he wants. With this capability, he’s been playing computer chess without ever lifting a finger.
This neural interface technology is great hope for people with damaged nervous systems, allowing them to live normal, productive lives.
But there are countless applications for such tech in our daily lives—like playing your favorite song, sending a text, playing a videogame, or even controlling a drone, with just our thoughts.
And since we’re on the subject of sending thoughts, someday, we might even be able to send neural experiences to one another. So when a friend of yours is on a beach in Maldives sipping her cocktail, she can send you a “neural postcard” that allows you to have the same experience she’s having.
#2 Precision Medicine: Bull’s Eye Every Time
Every time we take medicine, we weigh its pros and cons. We contend with side-effects, and avoid drugs that help with an ailment, but can also do serious damage to other organs in the long run.
Why? Because drugs in the market are not specifically formulated for us. They’re one-size-fits-all, made to be useful to the greatest number of users.
But imagine a world where your medicine and medical treatment are designed specifically for you, based on your genetic code. This is the promise of precision medicine. With advancements in genomics, doctors can now create treatment plans customized to each patient's unique DNA, targeting the root causes of diseases at the molecular level.
For conditions like cancer, heart disease, and rare genetic disorders, precision medicine offers targeted approaches that minimize side effects and maximize efficacy. Rather than a one-size-fits-all method, treatments can now be personalized, increasing the likelihood of successful outcomes.
#3 Gene editing: Rewriting the Code of Life
Okay, earlier we talked about medicine based on our genes.
How about changing the genes themselves?
Genes are the fundamental units of life, carrying the instructions for the growth, development, and functioning of every cell in our body. As such, any mutation, abnormality, or predisposition in our genes can lead to various health conditions.
Gene editing is about making very specific and very small changes to one’s genetic makeup.
Scientists use “CRISPR-Cas9” technology to find, cut, and delete/edit very specific parts of the genetic strand, those known problematic areas that cause certain diseases.
For example, sickle-cell anemia, which causes crippling pain, organ failure, and premature death, is caused by a single misspelled letter of DNA. “CRISPR-Cas9” technology locates this single abnormality and fixes it. Sickle-cell anemia becomes history.
Gene editing is expected to treat a whole array of diseases, like muscular dystrophy, which has already been demonstrated in mice. It will only be a matter of time before the same can happen for humans.
While gene editing holds incredible promise, it also raises ethical questions. For example, the potential to edit genes before birth brings up concerns about unintended consequences, including the risk of creating so-called “designer babies.”
It’s important to balance innovation with ethics and responsibility, especially when dealing with powerful technologies like gene editing.
#4 AI Eyes: Precision and Prediction in Healthcare
How many X-rays or MRI scans do you think your doctor sees in a lifetime?
Tens of thousands?
Hundreds of thousands?
Well, AI has seen billions.
It has seen billions of reports, lab tests, and treatment outcomes, and it remembers every last one of them. It’s all saved in the AI model’s memory bank.
AI models easily solve complex puzzles, putting together a patient’s symptoms, test results, and medical history, and proposing effective treatments.
Artificial Intelligence has proven to be a great help for doctors in diagnosing patients—catching red flags that are too subtle for the trained eye to see. AI sees those bumps, those darker regions, those patterns that escape human detection.
For example, an ECG test that would be considered “normal” by doctors can be flagged by AI for possible complications. Then a few months later, AI would be vindicated as those very cases develop the condition.
And AI models can catch trouble long before a doctor can. At the Mayo Clinic, for example, AI helps doctors diagnose heart failures and “atrial fibrillation” years before they actually develop.
With the help of AI, our chances of getting it right from the very start improve immeasurably.
#5 Bioprinting: A 3D-Printed Heart, Anyone?
In the United States, another individual is added to the transplant waiting list every 8 minutes. And every day, 17 people die waiting for an organ transplant. There are almost 90,000 patients in line for a kidney.
That’s just in one country. Imagine the numbers on a global scale.
That is the kind of impact “bioprinting” would have on human lives.
Researchers can now “print” tissues and even whole organs. The doctors obtain a very detailed image of the patient’s organ using a non-intrusive imaging technique. This data is then passed onto a machine which painstakingly replicates the organ one layer at a time. The technology is very much like 3D printing, with the patient’s stem cells used as “bio-ink.”
Great care is taken not to damage the cells during the whole process. And when it tissues have matured, they will be transplanted to the waiting patient. The lab-grown organs are less likely to be rejected by the immune system because the patient’s own stem cells are used.
Though the science is still in its early stages, there have been promising breakthroughs, including the successful printing of heart tissue and blood vessels. If fully realized, 3D bioprinting could eliminate the need for organ donors altogether, making life-saving transplants more widely available, and reducing wait times significantly.
The future of Medicine is as bright as ever, pushing us into an era when what was once considered speculative fiction is now slowly becoming fact—offering better health outcomes for all.
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