An Eye to the Future
An Eye to the Future
My younger daughter is an eye doctor. She works in a state of the art ophthalmology practice. When patients arrive for a consultation, they spend the first few minutes in front of a machine which records details of the insides of their eyes.
Juliet's medical training was little different from that of the generations of doctors before her - lectures, dissections and the memorisation of tens of thousands of facts about the human condition. For her ophthalmology examination she had to memorise a several hundred page book of photographs alongside descriptions and treatments of all manner of eye conditions. So, when the patient's eye images are sent from the scanning machine to the computer in her office, she is able to make a diagnosis.
Now, if the makers of the scanning machines are worth their salt, they will have arranged for images and diagnoses from their products everywhere in the world to be sent back to headquarters. The massive rise in computing power has triggered the development of image recognition software. Soon the machines will be able to do a better job of viewing the images and doing a diagnosis than an ophthalmologist with years of experience.
Led on by the exercise regimes of the healthy, new wearable diagnostic products arrive on the market every week. The companies producing the best of these are snapped up by Google, Facebook and Microsoft who will soon become the leading vendors of medical diagnostic equipment. It's not too difficult to imagine focusing a cell phone camera on the eye and getting a free diagnosis before too long. The only question is whether the drug companies won't be paying for their products to be preferentially recommended; after all someone has to pay for the new free service. Then too, if it's new glasses you need, you can just print out a new set of lenses on the 3D printer in your study and slot them into your frames.
I also found myself wondering why ophthalmologists need to have so much detailed information in order to do an eye operation. You would have thought the skills of a precision lathe operator or the steady hand of a lowly watchmaker would be more appropriate. Maybe we need to go back to the demarcation of the Middle Ages where physicians healed and barbers butchered!
Of course medical practitioners will fight this future tooth and nail. However for poor countries it provides the opportunity to deliver a first class medical diagnosis system for all without incurring the huge costs of replicating the national health services of Britain or Canada. As well as big brother watching, big sister will be constantly monitoring and making appropriate interventions!
So what should Juliet do with a working life of 35 or more years ahead of her? Stay where she is and be eased out by machines doing a better job than her? Moving to eye surgery wouldn't help as the robots are fast intruding there. She could use her energy and skills working for the software and robotics companies. Better still she could play a role in implementing a 21st century medical system unique to Africa; unfortunately the health authorities probably have their thinking firmly rooted in the outdated past and present. Or she could do something completely different....
My younger daughter is an eye doctor. She works in a state of the art ophthalmology practice. When patients arrive for a consultation, they spend the first few minutes in front of a machine which records details of the insides of their eyes.
Juliet's medical training was little different from that of the generations of doctors before her - lectures, dissections and the memorisation of tens of thousands of facts about the human condition. For her ophthalmology examination she had to memorise a several hundred page book of photographs alongside descriptions and treatments of all manner of eye conditions. So, when the patient's eye images are sent from the scanning machine to the computer in her office, she is able to make a diagnosis.
Now, if the makers of the scanning machines are worth their salt, they will have arranged for images and diagnoses from their products everywhere in the world to be sent back to headquarters. The massive rise in computing power has triggered the development of image recognition software. Soon the machines will be able to do a better job of viewing the images and doing a diagnosis than an ophthalmologist with years of experience.
Led on by the exercise regimes of the healthy, new wearable diagnostic products arrive on the market every week. The companies producing the best of these are snapped up by Google, Facebook and Microsoft who will soon become the leading vendors of medical diagnostic equipment. It's not too difficult to imagine focusing a cell phone camera on the eye and getting a free diagnosis before too long. The only question is whether the drug companies won't be paying for their products to be preferentially recommended; after all someone has to pay for the new free service. Then too, if it's new glasses you need, you can just print out a new set of lenses on the 3D printer in your study and slot them into your frames.
I also found myself wondering why ophthalmologists need to have so much detailed information in order to do an eye operation. You would have thought the skills of a precision lathe operator or the steady hand of a lowly watchmaker would be more appropriate. Maybe we need to go back to the demarcation of the Middle Ages where physicians healed and barbers butchered!
Of course medical practitioners will fight this future tooth and nail. However for poor countries it provides the opportunity to deliver a first class medical diagnosis system for all without incurring the huge costs of replicating the national health services of Britain or Canada. As well as big brother watching, big sister will be constantly monitoring and making appropriate interventions!
So what should Juliet do with a working life of 35 or more years ahead of her? Stay where she is and be eased out by machines doing a better job than her? Moving to eye surgery wouldn't help as the robots are fast intruding there. She could use her energy and skills working for the software and robotics companies. Better still she could play a role in implementing a 21st century medical system unique to Africa; unfortunately the health authorities probably have their thinking firmly rooted in the outdated past and present. Or she could do something completely different....
Proudly powered by Weebly