The Next Generation In Medicine
Mobile technology is altering the way we live, driving change and affecting every industry. In a discussion with Kathryn McKenzie, COO of Telstra and Chetan Sharma, President, Chetan Sharma Consulting on the future of technology, Tom Taylor, VP, Advanced Strategy, Verizon said, “Mobile has become the underpinning of the national economy.”
Sharma asked the short yet loaded question, “What’s to come in the next 5 years?”
Taylor and McKenzie agreed that the network will evolve to faster speeds and lower latency. With more bandwidth caused by increased connected devices, a strain on networks will continue to require more and more carriers to use more services and the network more dynamically. McKenzie highlighted, “From a network perspective we will need to be good at integrating all of the technologies to make a good end-user experience for customers.”
Additionally, software will continue to commoditize the hardware. “There will be a move away from hardware specific into flexible software and of course, the cloud. It gives you a lot more flexibility” noted Taylor.
It would be a miss to discuss the future, without touching on drones, wearables and connected cars. Verizon’s Taylor predicted “Five years from now the car will be like another tablet on your carrier plan” and “We will see more information coming into the car, with less distraction.”
Unlike 5 years ago, today, we hold our phones while we walk. In 5 years, this will be outdated, to be replaced by wearable devices that enable the smartphone to be an aggregator of content and devices. The audience at Future in Review (FiRe) conference were encouraged to look at drones beyond the media perception of a “delivery service” but as an asset for industries such as public safety and agriculture.
The future of telecoms will bring both challenges and opportunities and the open question remains, as always-on connections among people, process, data, and things become more pervasive, will the lines between work, technology and the rest of life continue to blur?
People typically get serious about their health in their mid-50s, however a growing body of research indicates that starting years earlier is the most effective way to reduce the risk of disease.
Thursday afternoon at Future in Review (FiRe) conference, Samir Damani, Founder and CEO, MD Revolution, Jonathan DeHart, President and CEO, NorthShore Bio, William Hearl, Founder and CEO, Immunomic Therapeutics and Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2, UC San Diego/UC Irvine discussed actions they are taking to make preventative healthcare a reality.
DeHart is focused on bringing biotechnology, computing, and semiconductor manufacturing together to accelerate the revolution in ‘digital biology’. He is laser focused on solving the “molecular information” problem and with the help of his team is developing electrical sensors to advance the capability and speed of molecular measurement.
Immunomic Therapeutics is a biotechnology company that develops protein-based vaccines for the treatment of allergy and other human health targets. Hearl said, “I live in the world of proteins which are 3 dimensional” and predicted that in order to harness the power of proteins, “We will need additional computing power… think about disease as a software bug, that is where we are going.”
According to panelists, a key trend is wearable health and fitness devices that provide patients with data that previously was only in doctors’ hands. Patients now use this data to take charge of their health and wellness which ultimately results in a healthier quality of life. Smarr concluded that, “Quantitative information drives behavior.”
Damani summed up the discussion nicely, “”Medicine is about understanding disease at its root…Genetic information is the result of the correlation between disease and predisposition.”