Speech Topic : The future of Medical Technology

What comes to your mind when you think about Technology? Elon Musk? Social Media? Our
Cell Phones? Technology has not just impacted and changed our lives, it has made it easier for us
to communicate, to travel, to work and has made our lives more simple than ever before.
Through technology, our world is improving everyday, as we progress further and keep
accomplishing new achievements. It impacts our environment, our people and our society as a
whole. A specific field of technology, Artificial Intelligence continues to develop at a brisk pace,
and will surely be one of the most upcoming life changing technology in the future. For instance,
our smart virtual assistants in our phones, Bixby, Siri or Alexa are all based on AI.

Furthermore, through Artificial Intelligence, developing AI technologies could more quickly and
accurately diagnose, strokes, eye diseases, heart disease and lung disease.

In today’s world, technology plays an important role in each field, especially in healthcare as it is
an area where recklessness can occur, which is the reason why new developments are
implemented cautiously. Technology has consistently kept advancing in the medical field, it has
saved millions of lives and throughout the years, the development of medical devices and
equipment have made a significant impact to improving the health of many patients. There
would be more accessible treatment to patients, much more efficiency and disease prevention
and control.

As well as through technology, mobile health applications could help prevent diseases by
keeping track of the patient’s health and nutrition as well as continuously monitoring their
health. As well as through virtual healthcare, where patients would have virtual visits with
doctors or nurses through communication technology, this would give patients the opportunity to
stay home for checkups.

In hospitals, virtual reality is rapidly becoming more popular for using it to diagnose images of
arteries as well as using VR in physical and mental health, in the future the value of VR in
medicine and healthcare would grow over 30 times.

There are also examples like, robotic surgery, 3D printed artificial organs, bones or prosthetics,
precision medicine and so much more in the future for medical healthcare. Researchers have also
thought of developing robots that could possibly act as a companion towards patients and
carrying out simple tasks for them. In the future, robots would most likely be working alongside
human doctors.
Despite these numerous benefits technology has to offer to the health industry in the future, it
also poses serious threats and risks. For instance, researchers have said that in the future, 3D
printers will be capable of even printing cells and body parts with enhanced capabilities directly
onto a human being, and that such a procedure has already been proven to work with mice.
Moreover, some sports athletes have also sought to use medical technology to extend their speed
or strength beyond what is “natural” without using drugs or supplements. This would lead to
being able to cheat other athletes as well as unfairness in sports.

This reminds me of a quote I found online submitted for a poetry competition by an author I do
not know,

This is also depicted in cinema. In particular the case of the film “Lucy” is an interesting case…

Frame, perspective, colour, diegetic or non-diegetic music, tone of voice, facial expression

Such as, data security and privacy issues. Data is currently one of the world’s most valuable
resource. Imagine if your personal medical data falls into the wrong hands? Or is misused by the
government or private companies? Moreover, the use of data is also being tied to machine
learning and artificial intelligence. Similarly, electronic health care records have created new
patient privacy exposures as records would be easily accessible by consultants, other third parties
and even targeted by cyber criminals. There are also cybersecurity issues and threats related to
mobile health applications and how it is important to protect the data and information of each
patient.