Today's lesson is on BioBusiness Revolution: Healthcare and Biomedical Science.
First we started off with a video. :)
Our video is Microsoft's vision: Future of Healthcare.
Yet another interesting video on what our future could be like. The video is from year 2009 where iPads have not been launched but interesting enough, we can see images of "iPads" in the video already.
One topic we discussed in class was if we believe such technologies may be implemented by the year 2020.
I believe it is quite highly possible for these technologies to be implemented by 2020 because actually we already have most of the technology shown, it just needs a bit of fine-tuning and the implementation. Of course there would be problems like the cost of usage of those technology or legislations but these problems will most likely be resolved with time as technology continues to advance.
The idea i liked most is actually on the credit card system at the end of the video where all the cards are electronic based and thumbprint secured. It'll save the hassle of bringing all the different cards out every single time.
We went on to talk about the statistics of market size for BioBusiness.
In the table, an interesting observation is that the US spending on healthcare is actually 50+% of global spending on healthcare. With US constituting 5% of the world's population yet making up a huge proportion of healthcare expenditure, there should be some problem about the US healthcare system. One of the reasons is because 70% of the healthcare expenditure in the US is spent on the last stage of the peoples' lives. This might be the less appropriate approach because i believe the government should focus more on young people or middle aged people as money spent on them is more well-spent. Not being unethical or something but I think the government should shift the focus to some extent as there are many younger people who are in need to medical attention but can't afford to do so. It'll be intriguing to know that at least 1/3 of the people in the US who are declared bankrupt are due to healthcare reasons even though they are insured.
As time goes on, the world's healthcare system is moving towards privatization. It can be seen locally in Singapore where hospitals used to be government sector but over the years it has been privatized.
There are a few types of healthcare system:
Primary - Deals with common illnesses
Secondary - Hospitalization; necessary treatment for a short period of time
Tertiary - More serious kind of treatment such as cancers
Quaternary - Rare diseases that requires highly specialized skills and is not widely accessible
Generally most government mainly focus on primary healthcare although tertiary healthcare should be paid more attention in developed countries with rising problems such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
An interesting point we talked about today is about spider web being one of the strongest materials in the world. A spider web that is one-inches thick will be able to hold up a jumbo jet. A rough idea was there's a group of researchers who tap into this field and tried to produce spider web. An interesting thing they found out was that the protein in goat milk in very similar to what the web that spider spins. Hence, through some genetic mutation or transplant, they managed to make the goat produce milk that can be synthesized into web. The milk is called spider silk milk. However, it is noted that no matter how hard they try, the web they produced can't seem to be as strong as a natural spider web. The good thing is the web made from spider silk milk is able to block rifle bullets but at reduced pressure. It still is not capable of blocking a bullet at full pressure but it is highly possible in the future and soldiers will not need wear heavy body armors instead they will wear costumes like how spiderman does.
Generally I rate this session 8/10 as there are new and interesting ideas on Healthcare and Biomedical science. However I feel like there are many other interesting areas that can be discussed but is not most probably due to the time constrain. Cheers! :)
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