Idealog.co.nz | The Transformation Issue
057
feature
O
ur predecessors have made some lengthy
strides in healthcare over the past century.
We have managed to stave off terrible
widespread plagues. We are living longer,
wit h developments so rapid that for every
month you live, medical science adds a week to your life
expectancy, partly thanks to the drastic drop of infant
mortalities. Furthermore, according to The Atlantic, in 1900
poor health swallowed up a staggering 32 percent of global
GDP, whereas now it affects just 11 percent. This number is
expected to be halved by 2050, according to economists.
In esoteric corners of the medical world in present
day, scientists are wielding microscopic scissors, ready to
cut and paste genetic material to manipulate the DNA of
humankind with Crispr. The possibilities are compelling,
with companies having already made cancer-curing
medicines, climate-change-fighting crops, biofuel-oozing
algae, and self-terminating mosquitoes.
There are also big dollars being spent on healthcare in
the quest to live longer lives. A growing list of billionaires,
including Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and the behemoth
that is Google, have pumped millions into research and
development towards ‘life extension’, refusing to accept
death as a part of life and instead viewing it as a mere
problem. The Bank of America expects the list will continue
to grow with predictions that the immortality market will
be worth $600 billion by 2025.There has been a lot of ambitious talk in the healthcare industry to expand
humans’ life spans, but what if the answer to an extended life isn’t radical
procedures like gene editing, but personalised, preventative healthcare? A
raft of technologies now available in the industry such as medical imaging
diagnosis, predictive personalised medicine and autonomous surgical
robots will wield big data to change the game for patient treatment. These
developments in technology have enabled deeper, unique access into the health
information of individuals, which in turn holds the promise of overall improved
quality of human health. However, as with many radical new technologies, there
are some scary side effects, such as our privacy at stake. Findlay Buchanan
talks to some of the influential figures in the New Zealand healthcare industry
about the challenges and opportunities of big data shaking up our healthcare.Perhaps the most radical
reform in healthcare won’t lie
in the realms of immortality or
gene-editing, but incrementally,
in the way healthcare itself
is being treated.However, while billion-dollar booms in DNA hacking
and immortality tend to grab the headlines, what is most
in need of an overhaul is the healthcare system. Although
access to medication and specialist treatment has enabled
humans to live longer lives, we are still plagued with pains
of disease, as well as our medical world coming to grips
with an aging population.
The Ministry of Health found that disease, commonly
caused by aging, remained the leading cause of death in
this country in 2015, which included cancer, heart disease,
strokes, bronchitis and asthma. Partly, these issues lie
within a reactive healthcare model: we get sick, we visit the
doctor, then we take medicine. It’s seen even more starkly
in the care of elderly people, who fall into depressing cycles
of health emergencies, as their prescription list grows