Medicine's Changing Face

Medicine's Changing Face

   As you all know, I am anything but a doctor or even someone who pretends to be knowledgeable about medicine.  But likely you've noticed as well as I have that medicine in general appears to be encountering a rather large technological change; within my own area's small clinic, digital film replaces X-rays, and everything from those results to prescriptions are on the various tablets making their rounds in the hands of the doctors.  Want to see your broken ankle? -- it's right here on the tablet, expanded at the specific point so I can be shown the enlarged version, making it easier to see the break.  And this is not only in my small clinic, but out in the remote areas of the world, as apps on mobile phones now take pulses, make diagnoses (yes, that's the plural of diagnosis...I had to look it up), and more importantly allow immediate contact with other doctors located in hospitals, ready to give advice on symptoms and surgeries.

   Even in the field of war, which is where many new medical products and procedures are tried (many eventually make their way back to the general population), products such as rapid blood clotting bandages are in use, saving countless lives (hikers and other sport enthusiasts can now purchase such items).  Air hospitals, C-17 Globemaster IIIs (the planes can be refueled inflight), carry everything from corporeal membrane oxygenation machines to operating rooms capable of performing open-heart massages and abdominal surgeries...while in the air.  From electronic stethoscopes to thermometers that never touch your body, the field of medicine (or at least, the field of medicine that we, the patient, sees), is changing.

   In a few months, doctors and device makers will meet in Maryland to work out 3-D printed body parts, primarily to discuss what new regulations should be applied to this rapidly growing field.  Already, customized jaw bones, spinal cages and cranial plates (skulls) have been printed and placed in human bodies.  As one biomendical engineer told Wired, "We don't all have to be Michelangelos anymore."  Indeed, NBA players are having osteochrondral autograft transplant surgery and autologous chondrocyte implementation, complicated words that are actually surgical procedures that are simpler and produce better results than the traditional micrfracture surgery, says Popular Science.  Indeed, other surgeons such as Martha Murray are questioning old procedures overall, in her case it was again the knees.  In a short piece in Fast Company, Dr. Murray couldn't understand why a torn ACL (which is unable to heal itself), couldn't be approached from a different angle, in this case, a scaffold that could not only repair the ACL but make it flexible as well (the link will display a graph that shows the idea); the FDA has approved her scaffold for human trials.

   Surgeons are even entering the brain to delicately and accurately place deep brain stimulators in patients...while the patients are awake talking to them.  The controversial DBS procedure is even being looked at by the Department of Defense, according to a piece in Smithsonian.  Other manufacturers are developing microscopic means of delivering medicine into your body, one corkscrew-shaped system being just one micron in diameter (a human hair is between 50 and 100 microns in size).  Others are shaped as scallops (and power themselves in the same way) and cages, and are able to reach inside your eye and organs, says Fast Company.  

   Not much of this is cheap, however.  One drug from Gilead Sciences, said to completely cure hepititis C in just three months, costs $1,000 per pill in the U.S. (many insurance companies won't cover the cost).  Still, over 115,000 people have used the drug, with a 90% effective rate (500,000 others with hepititis C have died in the same period).  The company has made $8.55 billion on the drug in just its first 9 months.  Ironically, in Egypt (according to Fast Company, 10% of Egypt's population suffers from hepititis C), a bottle of the drug costs just $300; patients who are unable to afford the cost are provided assistance by the company. 

   Making new drugs is expensive, and companies spend millions in research and test trials, all in an effort to create long-term results.  Even in the field of diabetes, newer treatments range from inhaled insulin to wearable contacts that monitor your glucose levels (a joint venture between Google and Alcon).  But none of this came easily.  Understanding that, 34-year old Elizabeth Iorns questioned why researchers, even independent researchers, couldn't share their studies and gather outside informational trials?  Her "game-changing" company, says ELLE, is called Science Exchange, one which has been used by every major pharmaceutical company, as well as NASA.  "I realized there was a potential to make a way bigger impact."  Another young questioner was 25-year old Grace Garey who created a nonprofit to help the everyday person help others needing health care.  Some donations have been just $5, but so far, over 11,000 people have donated close to $4 million to her site, Watsi.  "What really draws me in to a particular patient is the personal details," Garey told ELLE. "Connecting people is going to change the world."  Even the now-famous Elizabeth Holmes, billionaire and Stanford genius who created a simpler blood test and has been featured in magazines from The New Yorker to Wired, believes medical costs could be substantially reduced.  Her company, Theranos lists its prices on its website: blood typing, $2.05; cholesterol, $2.99; iron, $4.45.  If all tests in the US were performed at those kinds of prices, the company says, it could save Medicare $98 billion and Medicaid $104 billion over the next decade (that from the piece in Wired).  My own skepticism of hospitals holding true to those prices once they got a hold of the test, were rapidly corrected as I was told by an employee that hospitals that attempt to increase the prices are warned that the simple test will be pulled out unless they comply (the test was used almost exclusively during the ebola outbreak in parts of Africa).

   But if you're still a bit skeptical of the changes, you need only check out a few apps for your smart phone.  Want to help someone nearby, possibly save their life? -- download the free app, PulsePoint which will alert you if someone within a 1/4 mile needs CPR.  In a bad accident yourself and far from home? -- 911HelpSMS shows your location to nearby emergency personnel as well as calling 911 with one touch.  A similar app locates the closest hospital wherever you are (EMNet find ER), while ZocDoc can verify if the doctor or clinic qualifies in your network of insurers. 

   All in all, despite what seems like a quiet world out there, medicine is changing, even if most of us have been fortunate enough not to have had the chance to notice...by the way, did I mention my new, non-metal ceramic crown in my mouth?