Although solutions like three-dimensional (3D) printing and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been around for years, they continue to advance. With each new year comes novel features and applications — many of which can improve wellness or even save lives, including these eight tech innovations.
1. Image Recognition
Artificial intelligence-based image recognition tools have gotten good at saving lives. Students at Harvard Medical School recently developed an AI model that has a 94% accuracy rate when detecting cancers, substantially outperforming comparable programs. It trained on 15 million unlabeled images and 60,000 whole-slide images of tissues.
2. Mobile Apps
Mobile apps aren’t just for beating boredom anymore — emergency services professionals can use them to save lives. Medical services software often provides a suite of modules and apps that keep first responders alert. Recent statistics show that departments that integrated software solutions enjoyed improvements in their effectiveness and performance.
Apps like these work on tablets, smartwatches and phones, ensuring firefighters stay connected whether they are at the station, driving a fire truck or actively fighting flames. Thanks to global positioning system tracking, secure communications and real-time emergency alerts, they can save more lives without risking their own as often.
3. Artificial Intelligence
Have you ever spoken with a large language model? Despite holding thousands or even millions of conversations simultaneously, it makes your experience unique. That’s the beauty of this technology.
Medical professionals recognized AI’s unrealized potential when it first gained popularity. Now, it is being incorporated into hospitals worldwide. Whether it diagnoses diseases, recommends self-care activities or acts as a virtual assistant, it can use custom datasets and past conversations to hyperpersonalize medicine.
4. 3D Printing
Did you know a 3D printer can create prosthetics and tissues? Soon, the days of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical equipment or organ transplants will be a thing of the past. Since budget machines cost as little as $100, you could even build a medical or assistive device yourself.
5. Gene Therapy
Scientists can use gene therapy to replace, add, turn off or modify genes to treat diseases or solve health problems. This technology may sound futuristic, but it already exists. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) is a genome editing tool used to modify living organisms’ DNA selectively.
Hundreds of people have been treated with experimental CRISPR therapies so far, including a teenager from the United Kingdom who was diagnosed with leukemia. Her cancer affected her T cells, which are white blood cells that fight infection and disease.
Using CRISPR, doctors at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital modified T cells from a donor to track down and attack the patient’s cancerous T cells without being rejected by her immune system. The treatment worked — her cancer remains undetectable. Tools like this could help humanity beat devastating diseases like cancer.
6. Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology operates at the nanometer scale. For reference, one nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Something this small has a surprisingly huge impact on fitness and wellness. In health care, medical professionals use pills to deploy disease-detecting nanorobots — no risky surgery or invasive procedure is required.
Thanks to nanotechnology, previously untreatable diseases are now being halted by nanoscale medications. This technology has even more applications outside of health care. For instance, nanosensors can detect allergens or pathogenic contaminants in food manufacturing, stopping foodborne illnesses from taking lives.
7. Wearable Technology
IoT device popularity is rising exponentially. Experts expect 30 billion internet-enabled devices will come online by 2030, up from an estimated 17 billion in 2024. This trend represents a drastic increase in connected medical devices in the near future.
Wearables like fitness trackers, smartwatches and biological monitors can track vital signs like heart rate, oxygen level and blood pressure around the clock. This enables remote monitoring, helping doctors ensure high-risk patients remain stable. People who are recovering from surgery or have chronic conditions gain more control over their lives this way.
8. Voice Activation
How could voice activation technology save lives? Someone who falls and can’t get up can use a smart speaker or virtual assistant to call emergency services. Alexa Emergency Assist — Alexa’s suite of emergency assistance features — can alert emergency contacts if a call goes through. An urgent response agent can request the dispatch of first responders as needed.
Thanks to interconnected smart home technologies, people can protect themselves even when away from home. Both Alexa Emergency Assist and Google Nest can notify the homeowner if the sound of glass breaking or an alarm is detected. This way, they can save their pets from carbon monoxide or avoid walking into a burglary in progress.
These Technologies Will Save Lives In 2025 And Beyond
You shouldn’t take the technology in your life for granted. While tech innovations like nanorobot swarms and CRISPR are cutting-edge, even relatively mundane solutions like smart speakers or fitness trackers can offer protection or help eradicate disease. Who knows — maybe someday they will even save your life.
Author Bio
Oscar Collins is the editor-in-chief at Modded, where he writes about health and fitness. Follow him on Twitter @TModded for regular updates on his work, and subscribe to Modded Minute for more!