The future of geriatric medicine - 17/08/12
Abstract |
The old adults of today have benefited during their lifetime from tremendous public health successes, including the control of communicable diseases as well as outstanding progress in acute medicine, leading to a rise in chronic and disabled diseases. These important paradigm changes will be reinforced in future generations of elders by the introduction of informatics, biological innovations, high technology, DNA sequencing, nanotechnology, advances in cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence. Today, natural ageing with all its social inequities and insecure surroundings (war, natural catastrophes and climatic changes) constitutes an enormous challenge for the world countries. These widely varying conditions will be further exacerbated by the possible access to more sophisticated prosthetic devices and medical technology for the richest compared to the poorest countries. “Modified” ageing already exist but will benefit more of high technology, which will leads to “improved” and perhaps “immortal” humans. Radical changes in society will deeply influence the practice of medicine. Undoubtedly, the practice of tomorrow’s medicine will be wireless, from home to the hospitals and institutions. Miniature epidermal captures or “electronic skin” will transmit all the recorded health information to your mobile phone and your exhaustive and constantly updated medical chart will be sent to a “cloud computer”. Whatever all of these discoveries and their applications in daily life it is impossible to imagine the individual ageing process without considering the affective surroundings of the person. This “informal network of care” will be increasingly important in the context and will not be replaced soon by “companion” robots.
Le texte complet de cet article est disponible en PDF.Keywords : Ageing, Care networks, High technology, Nanotechnology, Wireless medicine
Plan
Vol 3 - N° 4
P. 233-237 - août 2012 Retour au numéroBienvenue sur EM-consulte, la référence des professionnels de santé.
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