In our earlier discussions about aging and challenges along with it, I wanted to provide some input on technologies that I have seen that will come to be available in the next 5-10 years that may provide new options, but I haven't got time to sit down and pull them together. Since we are in a transition between chapters and I have some time now, so here we go:
1. Auto driving on the highways
Self-driving cars is a buzz word and all the major car manufacturers are working on it. Some of the auto features are already available on Tesla and you can search online and see their latest progress. How safe it is? Based on what I have seen and people in this field I talked to, there is still challenges for auto-driving ANY time under ANY weather, urban environment is a bit challenging with so many pedestrians and a lot of complications, but machine does better, better than human when it drives on highways on in rural areas. Google has tested their self-driving cars on highways for more than 5 years and it is quite safe, particularly for areas not snow or rain often, so, for Boston it might be more challenging because snow changes the road features and make it more difficult for the computer to recognize where it is, but for areas not snow much, it is probably going to see those cars in use earlier. So if you don't like to drive on highways, the car can easily do that for you; on local urban environment, experts have different opinions, but what I have seen that makes sense to me is the semi-auto model, the drive can choose to drive herself/himself, and the car (computer) is monitoring all the time, when it detects dangerous situations, for instance, the driver seems getting sleepy, or the car is going to hit something if does not change its course, the car will then take over the control and make necessary correction.
In short, driving and going around shall be less a challenge down the road.
2. Prevention of Falls
It has been many years that researchers have been looking for ways to detect and prevent falls for seniors, based on what I know, the earlier technology was relying on having the seniors to wear some sensors on their body, but it seems out of favor now because it requires seniors to wear them all the time and this is not practical, and some seniors either forget or don't like to wear them. So these days researchers are focusing on using cameras in the surroundings to capture and do image analysis, one type of research I have seen is to measure the gait quality - it deteriorates before the fall occurs and thus serves as an indicator. For those type of technology, the tricky thing is usually in how much margin you want to set, and maybe different for each individual - if it is too large, it may set alarms too often and eventually the users and caretakers will have alarm fatigue and may ignore it, if it is too small, then it may run the risk of not having sufficient time to take preventative actions, so there has to be some sort of intelligence in the algorithms and with so much resources and capitals are pouring into the areas of artificial intelligence, the baseline technology will become more mature in the next few years and I thus expect the fall detection will increasingly become reliable in the near future.
3. Clothes becomes your smartphone, tablet, radio, blood pressure monitors, and more, etc
A $300+ million investment from public and private sectors is committed to the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (
http://go.affoa.org). It is based on the innovation from Professor Yoel Fink at MIT years ago that his lab by accident found a way to imbed semiconductor material (which all the electronics today are built with) inside tiny optical fibers, which means now you can weave those very tiny fibers into clothes, hats, gloves, and they will function as electronic devices for communications and computing, it will still take some times to make those into mass market, but it has attracted large group of companies from textile industry and other industries, it is one of the innovative manufacturing initiatives under Obama administration, hopefully it will survive through the current administration.
In short, you may not need to hover over a computer and gaze into a screen to post on this book club in the future, there will be more options open for more natural and easier ways to communicate and to monitor the state of your health.
4. More knowledge about what's going inside of us
It has been for quite few years that researchers in the medical industry have tried to get access to real time data inside the body to help monitor patients' inner environment and customize treatment. The methods usually involves a tiny device that goes inside the body (may stay there or circulate out) which gets the desired measurement, the data can be used to regulate medicine dosage, or to monitor critical parameters, etc.
Some examples, a company called Proteus Digital Health has put a tiny radio on a pill, and this radio is sort of "glued" onto the pill. When the pill goes inside the body, the tiny radio is turned on and starts to send out measurement data. It has been approved by FDA, not sure if the business has taken off or not.
Another company called CadioMEMS makes a tiny sensor which can be inserted into somewhere close to the heart and monitor some specific signals that appear about 1hr before heart attack happens, so the patient can call 911 and get to hospital in time to take proper medical treatment before the onset.
Many technologies are and will be applicable to medical applications, but in US the adoption rate has been frustrating to many high tech companies because of the insurance reimbursement barriers, it just takes many years to have something new be approved for insurance coverage, this has been the case for the last 10 years, but I hope this situation will change as the benefits of these new technologies are becoming more proven and the incentive for adopting new technology to save cost is becoming stronger.
In short, we will know more about what is happening inside of us and that will help lead to the optimized and customized treatment ("precision medicine" is the jargon for it).
5. New research discoveries on neural degenerative diseases
I remember some of you mentioned a friend with Parkinson's, there is a paper came out 10 days ago, researchers at Columbia University has found some connections between Parkinson's and autoimmunity - some of the neurons are mistaken by immune systems and thus attacked and damaged (the pattern found in the autoimmune diseases), so now there is a thinking that treatment methods for autoimmune diseases might be able to help treat Parkinson's:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170621132904.htmResearchers from MIT have found that 40Hz brain wave can help reduce Beta Amyloid accumulation in mice and raises the hope for new treatment for Alzheimer's:
http://news.mit.edu/2016/visual-stimulation-treatment-alzheimer-1207A lot of new research and new technology will come into play in the coming years that may open up new options and change outlook for lifestyles, these are just a few I can think of. With the technology innovation is pacing up, things are happening faster than before - if we think about the time when the the first iPhone appeared (2007) and music streaming was a new concept and what is today, it is only 10 years! 10 years from now, many things go will beyond what we can imagine right now.
Ah, one more thing I should have included but forgot is the Social Robots - as we read in the book that adult children don't have time to visit seniors as often as they want, social robots that become companions which will be smart enough to learn your interests and interact with you properly will become a possibility. There have been several labs working on this for many years, as the computing capability and the artificial intelligence research is gaining a lot of capital infusion, it will be possible that we may have a robot to join our book club in a not too distant future? That will be fun!
