Week 6

Today we went through the BioBusiness Revolution. We talked about a great number of innovations in Healthcare and Biomedical Science. One of the interesting uses of technology in healthcare we went through was patients seeing their doctors for consultation using tele-consultation, such as through a webcam. This is being tried in a few countries, like Singapore. An interesting idea put forward is that using such technology can save patients' commuting and waiting time, allowing them to use them on more productive means. Technology for such ideas, as well as the digital wallet that can make our lives much more convenient are already available and within easy reach but for some reason has not been implemented on a wide-scale.

We went through the causes such as: the global trend of obesity. One of the key takeaway points from this was that if obesity is not controlled, it could mean that the next generation could live shorter lives than their parents. This was thought-provoking, as with the march of technology and development, most of us would expect that we would be living longer and longer, but our sedentary lifestyles and accessibility to cheap fast food has instead brought upon this pandemic. Moving on from there, we talked about the top diseases plaguing mankind in the past and in the near future and how technology has led to this change.

During her presentation, Rebekah touched briefly on the future questions of gene-mapping. In this case: What about a person's right to the ownership and control of his genetic information? Furthermore, should relatives be notified of people's predisposition to diseases that may run in the family? I find such thought-provoking questions interesting and difficult to answer, thus I wished more time was given for discussion.

I would rate today's session a 9. Many interesting topics were discussed, such as human cloning, ethics and technological innovation, many of which do not have clear-cut answers.