Healthcare - Scenario 2010
An Ounce of Prevention...
Preventive medicine in 2010. Imaging methods and biochips will detect the earliest signs of illness at the cellular level. A manager tells his story.
A medical checkup in 2010. Doctor and patient examine high-resolution images of the patient's body on a flat screen. The images are obtained non-invasively using a multipurpose tomograph (left). Intelligent software notifies the doctor of suspicious areas. Biochips can be used to rapidly analyze blood samples (table, left). Infrared light illuminates finger joints from the inside, enabling the doctor to detect rheumatism at a very early stage (table, right)
It's that time again. Time to go to the health center for a full checkup. To be honest, I'm not exactly looking forward to it. At my last checkup six years ago, I got a big scare. The pictures of my brain showed small white spots that the doctor diagnosed as mini-strokes. At the time, I had high blood pressure and wasn't taking my medication regularly. But since then I've adjusted my eating habits, lost weight and gotten more exercise. And those aren't easy things to do when you've got a high-stress management job like mine. At least the examination doesn't take long, and lying in the magnetic resonance machine is much more comfortable than it used to be when you heard all those loud noises. Thanks to the new piezo vibration dampeners which, incidentally, are produced by my company, you can hardly hear anything now. And the diagnosis afterwards is also much faster. The software automatically marks any suspicious areas.
"Please come over here, Mr. Markus, and we'll take a look at the results," says the young doctor. Uh-oh, now things are getting serious. I take a look at the large flat screen and can see a life-size image of my body, or, more precisely, the inside of my body. The doctor compares the new images of my brain with those from 2004, which have been stored in my electronic patient file and can be called up from anywhere - but only by someone with authorization, of course. Thank God! No new mini-strokes. It seems my change of lifestyle has paid off.
Health as the engine of growth for the future
But then, look at those coronary arteries. They've been slightly constricted for years and also have plaque. Not good. So, just before the exam, the doctor injected me with a contrast medium that causes plaque-covered areas to light up if, and only if, they're infected and fragile - indicating the risk of a heart attack. Thank goodness again! The images are dark!
"Just to be sure, I'm going to let a cardiologist take a look at the pictures," says the doctor. She presses a button, automatically forwarding the images of my circulatory system along with my risk profile to a specialist. A short time later, the doctor gets a call from the cardiologist. "The risk of heart attack is low," he says. And what about the blood tests, which analyze proteins and genetic material? The doctor puts a couple of drops of my blood onto something resembling a credit card, which she inserts into a reading device.
Tiny biochips on the card then do the work of a complete lab in just a few seconds, while an infrared sensor illuminates the joints on my fingers. "Clear fluid, no rheumatism," reports the doctor. Then the mini-lab comes back with its results: everything's okay, but cholesterol is a little high. I guess I can live with that!
Ulrike Zechbauer
Healthcare Highlights
Before Illness Strikes
New imaging methods enable early diagnosis of illnesses - without any need for endoscopy or catheters more
A Picture of Health
Prof. Jörg Debatin can perform a complete check of the vascular and nervous systems and all internal organs in just 60 minutes. An interview with the pioneer of full-body preventive check-ups more
Getting Well with the Web
Telemedicine opens up new opportunities to care for patients at home and recognize health risks before they become dangerous more
The Sooner the Better
Biochips and molecular diagnoses enable doctors to detect diseases years earlier than was previously possible. Treatment can thus begin before the patient actually becomes ill more
Does Preventive Medicine Pay?
Interviews: Preventive medicine and national screening programs are helping to save lives in the United States and Great Britain interviews with J. Clymer, USA and S. Barter, GB