Although information regarding the coronavirus has grabbed all the headlines for the last two years, the truth is that in this pandemic period Countless investigations have continued to be developed to solve the great global health problems apart from the health crisis.
industry Health He has not given up in his efforts to find those procedures that, in the near future, will save the lives of people with heart attacks or with hitherto incurable cancer and will even enable quadriplegics to walk. Allocating the relevant resources to research is essential to obtain these new treatmentsimprove techniques, create innovative devices and develop a multitude of elements that improve the quality of life of people or even save it.
This constant cycle of research and innovation is already showing its first and promising results, there is more to come. Next, we list those who are called to revolutionize the world of health and improve our quality of life.
Some milestones that will revolutionize health
On-Demand Cellular Soldiers: T-cell therapies, known as CAR-T, are the next big thing in cancer. They have managed to save the lives of dozens of patients who barely had a life expectancy of six months, selecting and modifying the cells of their immune systems so that they fight cancer cells directly.
At the moment, this new therapy is focused on a few lymphomas and blood cancers, although there is more and more promising research to apply it once morest solid tumors and other types of pathologies.
Writing with the mind: Writing from the imagination is the solution that researchers from Stanford University are betting on to improve the communication of tetraplegic people. Thanks to the mental effort of the patient, various sensors implanted in his brain and artificial intelligence, a mental writing system converts your neural activity into text. In addition, it reaches a speed similar to that used by any person when writing a text message on a smartphone.
Ending tumors without collateral damage: proton therapy, recently approved in Spain, is the great revolution in the treatment of malignant tumors. This external radiotherapy technique makes it possible to specifically attack cancerous masses with protons. In this way, it protects the rest of the healthy tissue as much as possible because it is not exposed unnecessarily to radiation, unlike chemotherapy. This advance represents a great leap in the fight once morest all types of cancers, but especially for brain tumors.
Spinal cord ‘chips’ to walk once more: there are already dozens of patients around the world who have been able to walk once more thanks to an electronic implant in the spinal cord. Hundreds of researchers work for po be able to use this technique on a massive scale for disabling diseases ranging from paraplegia to debilitating neurodegenerative pathologies.
Pills for everyone? No, tailor-made medicine: genomic therapy will revolutionize medicine through the personalized approach to the disease by studying one’s own DNA. This individualization will make it possible to design unique treatments for each patient and find the most suitable drug administration according to their chemical and genetic individuality. In this way, in all medical areas, more effective treatments can be applied with few side effects.
One step ahead of diseases: globally, dozens of projects are being developed that investigate the application of artificial intelligence for the early detection of all kinds of diseases. This technology will save time when it comes to detecting pathologies – from cancer to dementia – thus reducing the impact on the patient, improving their life and even saving it. For example, a group of researchers from the University of Tokyo is developing a system that will prematurely detect Alzheimer’s with a simple phone call.
Green surgeries for the health of the planet: the energy consumption of operating rooms is between three and six times higher than that of any other hospital facility, which makes them black holes for sustainability. the american strategy Greening the Operating Room Reduce your ecological footprint by designing protocols that minimize the environmental impact of energy use and waste generatedapplying methods to eliminate plastics or substituting ethylene oxide as a sterilizer, deeply rooted but very polluting, with hydrogen peroxide.
Clean and fast drone flights: there are also various projects focused on the use of drones for jobs that were traditionally carried out by motor vehicles. In Canada and the United States, several of these aircraft have already transferred dozens of organs ready for transplantation from one hospital to another, saving the contamination of a helicopter and arriving much faster.
Along the same lines, some European countries are using drones to carry automated external defibrillatorsthus eliminating the contamination of an ambulance, reducing the response time to a heart attack and reducing the sequelae that the patient may suffer.