7 medical breakthroughs in 2017 make sure you are admiring

These are all major influences on the world's medicine over the past year.

2017 marks many medical breakthroughs in the world. Let us also find out what these breakthroughs are and how they contribute to human medicine.

1. Tricorder: a health examination device in Star Trek

If you are a fan of the Star Trek movie, you can't forget that Dr. McCoy uses a sensor called Tricorder to collect and track human health information.

Recently in an XPrize competition organized by Qualcomm with a prize of up to $ 10 million, a similar product like Tricorder could become a potential health care device in the future.

For more than 5 years, a group of researchers from the US, UK, Canada, India and Taiwan competed to develop their own Tricorder. These mobile Tricorder can diagnose health problems and monitor real body indicators such as blood pressure. Scientists hope that these devices can be used at home so that patients can assess and take care of their health instead of having to seek medical care.

2. T-cell immunotherapy

There are now great advances in medicine, especially the treatment of leukemia such as leukemia, which helps the survival rate of infected children to more than 85%. Scientists predict that in the future these advances can save lives and increase the survival rate even higher.

This is the first time the US Food and Drug Administration approved the T-cell immunotherapy (CAR) to treat cancer in US medical centers. With this cellular immunotherapy, T lymphocytes are separated from the patient's body and processed in the laboratory. Later, these cells are transferred back into the patient's body to attack cancer cells.

Clinical trials on children are very successful, with high survival rates. Therefore, T-cell immunotherapy is a promising method to bring hope to cancer patients in the world.

3. Practical interactive application

As the Pokémon Go game explodes, millions of people around the world have the opportunity to enjoy augmented reality (AR) every day, in which a computer enhances the position and sound in a real environment.

In medicine, some typical AR tools like AccuVein can describe veins in a patient's body. This groundbreaking technology will become more popular in the future as it can:

1. Support for doctors and medical students to perform certain surgeries, procedures and removal.
2. Helping patients visualize the conditions for treatment, surgery and recovery of their own health.
3. Map the location of healthcare providers and lifesaving devices (such as defibrillators) for people in an emergency.

In the future, eye and ear implants will also be widely used. Companies like Google and Samsung have filed patents for lens implants to monitor glaucoma and drug delivery.

4. Artificial blood

From artificial limbs to artificial hearts, pacemakers to ear implants, scientists are finding ways to replace nearly every human body part. Recently, scientists said they could create artificial blood.

In 2017, the British National Health Agency (NHS) conducted a trial of safety assessment on 20 people who received a small amount of artificial blood from stem cells. The initial goal of this study was to create red blood cells to treat specific conditions, such as sickle cell anemia.

In the long run, scientists at the NHS hope to provide enough blood for patients with rare blood types.

5. The mobile stroke treatment unit

When strokes occur, patients can lose about two million neurons per minute. And if left for a long time, the lesions in the brain get worse.

Therefore, researchers have developed mobile stroke units (MSTU or MSU) to save patients' lives in time.

MSTU units can help with rapid diagnosis, stroke treatment and timely patient survival. MSTU can quickly reach the patient's home in time, determine the cause of the stroke due to blood clots, use medication to resolve blood clots and then take the patient to the hospital.

In the early stages, such units were established in Cleveland, New York, Houston, and Denver, helping to save many patients every day. The US government plans to provide MSTU units in about 40% of emergency rooms in major US cities.

6. Health technology interaction

One of the most recent advances in medicine has been the interoperability or application of information technology on health care, such as the hospital's digital systems to facilitate communication with each other. .

Introduced in early 2017, the Quick Link Health Interaction Resource Tool (FHIR) is a tool that helps save money and balance life by improving the speed and efficiency of data transfer. strong

Basically, instead of transferring the entire data, creating a backup, FHIR transfers specific health care information - one word, one code - from one place (eg your doctor) to another account (eg payment). This means that health care workers don't have to go through tons of irrelevant information to find the data they want.

7. Ultrasound therapy for Alzheimer's

According to the Alzheimer's Association in the United States, currently 1 in 3 older people can die from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia.

While people are still struggling to find comprehensive treatments, there is a promising breakthrough for Alzheimer's patients. It is an ultrasound therapy on amyloid plaques, which surround neurons and is thought to be able to treat Alzheimer's disease.

In 2015, Australian researchers discovered that ultrasound can remove amyloid plaques in mice, and 75% of them can complete memory tests.

Scientists also reported that there was no injury to surrounding tissues, and that treatment could be much cheaper than similar drugs, The Wall Street Journal reported.

However, the application of this breakthrough on people still requires much more effort because the human brain biological structure is more complex. But this is a breakthrough that brings promise to Alzheimer's patients.