The Cloud Technology is an evolution in the world of computers and it has an impact on many fields and domains, it represent a big help for scientists that want to use the compute capacities, for the biologist that want to use the storage and data analysis capacities and of course on the world of IT where this technology present the best solution for several problems. But today I want to write about the impact of this technology on the medical field.
Strange, Cloud and Health Care, In fact the cloud we will provide services that we can only read about it in the science-fiction comic books, imagine an IPhone that can replace a hospital and getting access to treatment just by pressing a button.
Leveraging Cross-Disciplinary Exponentially technologies (Digital Medicine, Robotic surgery, Nano medicine, connected Health....) have a great impact on the quality of our health care services and provide for us
• Low-Cost Gene Analysis
• Computational Bio-Informatics
• Internet Connectivity
• Social Networking
This growth and those new means give us the chance to attack major problems in the world of health care and medicine like (Insufficient use of Information, Cost, Demography, Prostrated Adoption of innovation....). May be with some examples I can better explain this:
My First example will be the Iphone, Great Device that has more than 20000 applications for medicine and health care for example there is a Glucometer attach to some Iphones and of course an app for that to check the blood Glucose and send it to your doctor, also with the same phone you can attach a chip and check you self or your partner from STI (Sexual transmitted Infections)….
Another great news, now the virtual colonoscopy is available, the technique basically simulate the human colon and by using a very complex Artificial Intelligence techniques doctors will be able to do this exam virtually without touching the patient
Also the diagnostic devices become cheaper and portable, for example the stenoscope that used to be big and expensive now is available in the size of the hands and cost only 5000 $ of course this device need an application in order for it to work.
Furthermore some everyday objects can be transformed to be diagnostic tools like the mirrors and the watches, imagine at the morning when you wake up you will get a full body check by your lovely Mirror.
In the other hand the medical records are going electronics including the genetics information of the patient in fact in the US only less than 20% of patient’s data are still not electronic. And finally the medical imaginary evolution that able doctors to look inside a human body or brain distantly in real time with a very high resolution in order to understand better the diseases.
All those example are great, and make our life much easier but there are two major problems that will stop this exponential growth, one how we can make those devices do great amount of calculation and computational operation without losing in term of money or size and two how we can keep tracking, centralize and store the big amount of data flow (yesterday we manage 50 MB per patient, today 20 GB and tomorrow 1 terabyte). Well the answer is simple : cloud computing, the cloud can offer a mean to store data in a secure and scalable way also it have an infinity of computational resources so by simply connecting a mirror to a cloud it will be able to have the same capacities that have a calculation grid.
The Cloud will not help only in storing data and provide the compute resources that tools needs, it will help doctors to diagnose diseases by using A.I(those techniques need a big computational resources) so we can get more and more precise diagnostic and reduce the errors probability, in addition cloud will offer a great reports on your health providing you with advices based on your current state of health and by doing some complex data and genetically analysis it well be able to predict and prevent diseases on some regular basis (T4 medicine)
Also the cloud will provide great resource for studying the patients so pharmaceutical companies provide better cures that consider human variety.
And finally the cloud will offer cheaper services because what we use to pay for 10 MB hard disk now will get us thousands of Gigabytes
The cloud computer will be the central system that provides storage and computational resources for hundreds of medical and non-medical devices that are distributed everywhere (inside and outside the body) and that keep tracking the human health state so we can have a health system that:
· Empower the patient
· Enable the doctor
· And Enhance wellness
Cloud computer is a fact and has its own impact in many fields, it opens doors for scientists and researchers to innovate and create without thinking about resources or means.
