Medical research is widely believed to progress slowly. After all, new antibiotics and cancer treatments take years to come to market.
But like every other industry, it’s benefiting from the explosion in digital technology we’re seeing across the board. The sector is thriving as new possibilities become available and research labs and hospitals take advantage of them.
But what’s coming around the corner? What can we expect in terms of medical technology next? And how will it impact precision medicine? Let’s take a look.
Big Data
Big data has been around for a while, but it has taken some time to build systems that can use it effectively in clinical settings. Finally, though, that’s now happening. Big data is becoming a thing, and enterprises are using it across the board in research labs and medical institutions.
Big data allows researchers and medical professionals to probe the data available to them more deeply. It lets them detect hidden patterns in the noise and find ways to interpret it more fully.
Big data often works in conjunction with AI, but it doesn’t have to. Older statistical techniques can also work, though they tend to be less robust to sampling and distribution issues.
Bioprinting
At the same time, we’re seeing the emergence of more mature bioprinting technologies. These are getting better at replicating patients’ cell lines and then printing new tissues for them that surgeons can attach to their bodies (or use to replace damaged organs).
The hope is that the technology will enable the growth of new parts for everyone. For instance, if someone has a heart attack that damages the organ, the hope is that they will be able to print another one.
Stem Cell Research
We’re also on the cusp of a stem cell revolution in medicine, one of the most powerful technologies discovered to date.
Stem cells are important because they can take on the form of any cell. What’s more, many are immortal, meaning they have the ability to rediscover their youth when they start to differentiate.
Finding and labelling these samples with a cell sorter is now possible, thanks to changes in sorting techniques. This means that researchers can harvest these cells from tissues more readily (instead of having to use more invasive and challenging techniques), allowing them to perform faster studies into cancer and immunology.
However, stem cells could also find their way into medicine. New techniques are looking at leveraging them to reverse the clock in some tissues, causing them to behave as if they are younger than they actually are – an exciting development.
Gene Editing
Related to this last point is the topic of gene editing, another powerful biological tool. It may be possible to partially edit somatic (adult) cells and return them to an earlier stage, potentially reversing the ageing process.
Gene editing is easier today than ever before because of the advances in virus vector technology. Therapies could eventually change defective pieces of DNA code and correct congenital diseases (as some techniques are doing already).
