Revolutionising and reinventing Medicine
We are currently experiencing a great period of particularly stimulating technological breakthroughs. A great deal of progress is expected in practically all areas of our daily life: health, home, work, consumption, the environment… In the health sector alone, there are plenty of new inventions: you can manage your diabetes with a mobile application, make a prosthesis with a 3D printer, continuously monitor your own statistics and there are new techniques for predictive analysis .
These inventions are gradually transforming our approach to health and the relationship between hospitals and patients. As these innovative technologies become more and more widespread, the patient becomes more active in monitoring his own state of health and the hospital’s role is changing: we spend less time in hospital, there’s greater comfort for the patient, and the costs for our social security system are reduced. So, in the long run, medical innovation may improve both the quality of healthcare for the patient and the performance of our health system.
At this time of medical innovation, surgical robotics is a particularly promising area. A sign of its potential: surgical robotics alone represents a world market which should reach over 20 billion dollars by 2020! This is mainly due to the boom in minimally invasive surgery, which is a way of operating patients via very small incisions. I created Medtech because I was convinced that this trend was inevitable and positive both for patients and the medical world. By democratising the access to minimally invasive surgery, this technology facilitates and considerably improves the surgical act – serving patients and practitioners – and contributes to the performance of hospital facilities.
Let’s transmit and connect these innovations!
As innovations are only meaningful when they are shared, surgical robotics also aims to make modern surgery accessible to as many patients as possible. The democratisation challenge is well under way, but it’s still suffering from several institutional, political and psychological obstacles.
Furthermore, the development of surgical robotics itself is strongly correlated with the development of several other technologies. These include technologies which are not specific to the design of intelligent robots, but also real time communication tools, imaging, energy management, etc.
So all of these digital revolutions must be transmitted throughout the operating rooms for mutual enrichment. It is urgent to adapt our whole medical ecosystem: make our devices as intuitive as possible, leading to ever more accurate imaging, linking data to be more efficient… And for each of these challenges, there’s always a solution! We just have to identify it and open it up to medicine. The digital revolution has plenty of things to offer to medicine, provided that we can create links within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. I believe this is where our group challenge lies, because it must also involve the public authorities, large companies, health professionals and citizens. So that each of us may one day benefit from the best solutions for our health.
Innovative health technologies, which will be available in tomorrow’s hospitals, operating theatres and doctors’ surgeries, are able to meet the challenges of our healthcare system and bring hope to all citizens. They will only have a lasting impact on tomorrow’s society if they are sufficiently shared.
This blog is part of the MedTech Forum blog series. Bertin Nahum is a speaker at MedTech Forum. Join the online conversation using #MTF2016. More information is available at medtechforum.eu.
