The borderless future of health care

4

October

2019

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Telesurgery and robotics enable the healthcare industry to be at its best anywhere, anytime in the world. But is this realistic?

The healthcare industry is in great move, where hospitals and health clinics are not but the patient is key and at centre. The main technology that can currently provide borderless health care is telesurgery. In other words, when 5G and robotics are combined, surgery can be done from any place on earth on anybody anywhere on the planet, without any geographical limitations. The location of patients gets a subordinate role to access of top-quality health care.

Obviously, this has great impact on future surgery, now quality surgery is available from unlimited distances, even in developing countries where top quality health care is lacking. Moreover, these areas are very hard to reach for doctors, it would be a great time safer if they could work from ‘home’. Additionally, doctors from all over the world can now work together. For example, a patient needs a very tough and complicated brain surgery and only very few people know how to execute the operation. Moreover, performance increases and the most modern techniques can be used as telesurgery make use of robotics. Human imprecision, tremors and clumsiness can now be eliminated. (Choi et al. 2018)

5G is currently quickly expanding and rolled-out widely across the globe. According to Ericsson Mobility Report June 2019 (2019) up to 65% global population, or 1.9 billion people, could have access to 5G by 2024. 5G is the fifth generation of wireless mobile network technology. Speed, bandwidth and reaction time on this new network will improve drastically. Enabling fast and stable network. However, it is mostly adopted in crowded and wealthy regions, developing countries need to overcome some hurdles first. For example, energy sources need to be stable and powerful, coverage cannot be guaranteed with too little signal and users and the government needs to subsidize users and implementation. (Chiaraviglio et al., 2016)

In conclusion, telesurgery is a big step in the right direction for reaching SDG3 (“Health – United Nations Sustainable Development”, 2019), good health and well-being for everyone. Limitations are that the changes will only take place at a slow pace since it is a very robust, inflexible industry. It is not agile and not sensitive to disruptive technologies. Moreover, the benefit will really be visible once 5G is implemented more widely, not just in a few advanced countries.

 

References:

Chiaraviglio, L., Blefari-Melazzi, N., Liu, W., Gutierrez, J. A., Van De Beek, J., Birke, R. & Wu, J. (2016, November). 5G in rural and low-income areas: Are we ready? In 2016 ITU Kaleidoscope: ICTs    for a Sustainable World (ITU WT) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Choi, P. J., Oskouian, R. J. & Tubbs, R. S. (2018). Telesurgery: Past, Present, and Future, Cureus.

Ericsson Mobility Report June 2019. (2019). Retrieved 4 October 2019, from

https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/reports/june-2019

Health – United Nations Sustainable Development. (2019). Retrieved 4 October 2019, from         https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/

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Will Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain technology actually make a difference ‘for everyone’?

24

September

2018

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For years Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence based technologies promise to change or disrupt the world for the better. PwC predicted in 2018 that in the upcoming years Artificial Intelligence technologies will ‘come down to earth’ and make a difference for individuals. But if that is the case, then I wonder if Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain will also make a difference in a specific area where two of the most pressing world problems, the energy transition and poverty come together: the energy industry in developing countries.

Shifting to innovative sources of energy as well as other low carbon solutions has been proven to be very difficult even to the richest companies and governments in the world. That made me wonder how difficult this transition must be for the least developing countries. In most cases, the governments and companies of these countries lack the technology, money and policies to govern a sustainable energy transition. At the same time, specifically these areas will be impacted most by the consequences of climate change, such as draught and rising water levels. A good example is Cape Town, South Africa, where the whole city was almost without water, due to low water levels in their surrounding dams. At the same time, their government needs to product the city from rising water levels as well.

However, within this challenge, there is opportunity to start enjoying new energy particularly in areas where not much investment is done in the fossil technologies. If we look specifically at the technological challenge, good first steps have already been made. For instance, Artificial Intelligence has made SMART Grids possible, by predicting their maintenance needs and the renewable energy output. At the same time Blockchain technology helps modernizing grids by rerouting power in case of emergencies. Also, blockchain technology enables individual households who can generate and store electricity to enter automated, peer-to-peer transactions with other households or sell power back into the grid at the market price.

This shows that both technologies could help poor families get access to renewable, affordable and reliable sources of energy, especially in combination with Solar technology. But will it be enough? Let me know what you think in the comments!

Sources:

https://www.pwc.es/es/publicaciones/tecnologia/assets/ai-predictions-2018.pdf

http://conferencefora.com/public/uploads/57d87b45747c4fce4c82035ffa9343a3-01-10.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/04/back-from-the-brink-how-cape-town-cracked-its-water-crisis

https://blogs.adb.org/blog/4-ways-blockchain-will-disrupt-energy-sector

https://www.disruptordaily.com/ai-disrupting-energy-industry/

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Big Data And Public Transport: Mapping Developing Countries

3

October

2016

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In many developing countries public transport is not comparable to the way we are used in our modern western societies. In our society we use mobile applications to look up information regarding trains, buses, metros and trams to get to our destination. However, in developing countries these apps do not exist simply because the lack of an extensive public transportation network. In cities from Bogota (Colombia) to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), public transport is mainly offered via informal privately owned transport companies. These essential networks are almost invisible for governments but increase the mobility of its citizens.

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