Technology X Medicine
Daniel's Podcast
Adam's Podcast
Hjamar's Podcast
Charles' Podcast
Articles for Podcasts
Daniel's Part - Application of Virtual Reality in Medicine
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The meaning behind the term “virtual reality” can be interpreted as “near human experience”. The world as we know it is presented to us through our senses: taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing. Virtual reality calls for our senses to be presented through a computer generated virtual environment that can be explored through our senses.
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The virtual reality that the general public have been presented with today is that of the commercial usage of it. Products such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are finding their way out on the market into the hands of anticipating fans. As of now the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive offers a virtual experience combining the senses of sight and hearing. These products both use a virtual reality headset which secures a display in front of the user’s eyes – together with head tracking sensors, controllers and track pads the user is immersed in an artificially created environment. Both of these products can be seen as the stepping stones to future implementations of more developed virtual reality products.
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However, virtual reality is not only limited to the commercial market, where one of the main purposes of it is to indulge the user in a virtual playground. There are many different uses and reasons to invest in the up and coming virtual reality technology. Apart from the entertainment industry where a lot of the focus is at, the technology has a lot of potential to be applied to the field of medicine.
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There have already been discussions regarding the application of virtual reality to the medical field. Something that has already been tested is the application of virtual reality in exposure treatment. Psychiatrists at the University of Louisville use virtual reality to help patients cope with their phobias in controlled environments, where they face their fears or engage in strategies to cope with their fears. Other virtual experiences that help patients are those of post-traumatic stress disorder treatments, pain managements, opportunities for the disabled and those that are homebound. The development of virtual reality within the medical field gives hope to those that otherwise have to undergo other more complicated treatments. Not only does virtual reality help patients with their treatments, but also allows the opportunity for medical personnel to train. It can also benefit the training for surgeons as it usually involves cadavers and more experienced doctors taking over bigger portions of the procedures. Virtual reality will open up for other means for surgical training, as it does not put any real patient at risk.
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Medical applications of virtual reality should not prove to be of any economic issues, as it will most likely either replace conventional methods or cope with those that already exist. Methods involving virtual reality do not require much more than a virtual environment and equipment to deploy the user, which makes it very cost efficient. In contrast, conventional methods may be limited by supplies depending on the patient’s needs.
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Given enough time, the world will see the full potential of virtual reality. The applications that it has today within the medical field are limited by the two senses it is using: hearing and sight. As this technology develops it will undoubtedly include other senses too, which will allow for even wider applications in the medical field.
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As we know of it now, the entertainment industry is what is leading the development of the virtual reality technology, but together with other industries the development of virtual reality may be faster than we can imagine. As of today, we are only scraping the surface of what virtual reality has to offer.
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References
Carson, E. (2015, March 10). TechRepublic. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from techrepublic.com: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/9-industries-using-virtual-reality/
Carson, E. (2015, April 15). TechRepublic. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from techrepublic.com: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/10-ways-virtual-reality-is-revolutionizing-medicine-and-healthcare/
Virtual Reality Society. (2016, January 6). Virtual Reality Society. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from vrs.org.uk: http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-healthcare/medicine.html
Hjalmar's Part - What is grapheme?
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In 2010 the Nobel Prize in Physics went to two scientists who found a simple way to isolate a single layer of graphite and called it graphene. Graphene consists of only one layer of atoms it is therefore considered to be 2D. The carbon atoms are arranged in a hexagonal lattice, which makes it the thinnest, most electrically and thermally conductive material in the world. This while being flexible, transparent and incredibly strong.
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Graphene has been acknowledged as an important area for future research by the EU which therefore established the flagship program in 2013 for it. The program is 10 years long and one the first two flagship programmes funded by the EU (The other one being the human brain project). The EU project is led by Chalmers in Gothenburg and has a budget of one billion Euros.
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One example of a project founded by the flagship program is being done by a team at Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) in Germany. They are trying to develop an artificial retina using graphene. It has the potential of curing blindness in patients with an intact optical nerve. The implant works as a prosthesis which converts the incident light to electrical impulses which then can be interpreted by the brain. There are implants made from other materials today but they have face issues with the body rejecting them. As graphene is very bio-compatible researchers hope to have overcome this problem now. This can turn-out to be a major breakthrough if it works.
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There are many projects worldwide other than those part of the flagship programme. Researchers at MIT believe they have found a way to utilise graphene in x-ray machines. Their findings are mainly based on a new theory but also supported by simulations. If a sheet of graphene is struck by a laser beam then it emits plasmons, surface waves. The plasmons can then be used to generate a pulse of raditation. The emited light can range from everything from infra-red to x-rays. A positive aspect to this is that the emitted waves will be of the same wavelength and tightly aligned similar to a laser beam. Since they are so tightly aligned it will be possible to x-ray very small area. This deceases the amount of radiation which patients will be exposed to when used in medical purposes as the surrounding areas won’t be exposed to the radiation. As larger amounts of radiation involve health risks this is a good thing.
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Another area which the scientists believe this technique can prove helpful is within high-power x-rays which are used for in research. When this is done today electrons are usually accelerated to gain more energy and then “wiggled” which emits x-rays. There are not many of these types of x-ray machines as they are very expensive and the queues to these are therefore very long. With the new method it would be much cheaper. The revolutionary component here is that these x-rays will be made possible without high energy electrons.
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To conclude, there are endless areas of application for graphene and researchers are only scraping on the tip of the ice berg. The future is exciting and we will see many new creative solutions to today’s problems.
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Sources:
Chandler, D. L. (2015, November 23). A new way to make X-rays. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from MIT news: https://news.mit.edu/2015/new-way-make-x-rays
Peleg, R. (2016, May 20). Graphene: The Next Medical Revolution. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from medGadget: http://www.medgadget.com/2015/05/graphene-next-medical-revolution.html
TUM. (2014, August 7). Artificial retina: Physicists develop an interface to the optical nerve. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from Research News: https://www.tum.de/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/short/article/31725/
Adam's Part - Bio-Computer
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Imagine having to read several hundred pages of a book, but instead of reading word by word you could read several word at a time, or perhaps several sentences at a time, or several pages, or while you’re at it, why not read several books at a time. This seems rather impossible, but what if you split up the work, have four people read four different books and then share their experience with each other. That is what computer sciences call Parallel Computing. In fact you have probably heard of the so called supercomputers. Those are simply several computers put together each reading their own book, or task sequence and then putting it all together. However something even more fascinating is being developed right now. The bio computer and the quantum computer, these are both parallel computers, however they are not made of several devices, they themselves are working on several sequences at a time. Like a superhuman reading several books at the same time. And on top of that they are very energy efficient and really small compared to a room sized supercomputer. Of course it’s not that simple. Bio computers are a decade away from working and need a lot of founding’s, and quantum computers won’t even work unless they are in -273°C.
So then you may wonder why do we need these Parallel Computers?
First of all we have the aspect of “Positive Cycle of Computer Industry”, an idea that people
will get used to their technology and will start craving for better. It’s also something that reminds me of what my teacher once said, that “the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know”, an idea of broadening your horizons through development. In the same way with stronger and better computers we realize we can get even stronger and better computers, and so on, the cycle continues.
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However the main aspects of parallel computing are energy consumption and time. You may think that computers today are already really fast; you can search on Google and find things faster than anywhere else. And if you want your computer to run some complicated data analysis or calculations, just leave it on for some time and do other things meanwhile. Well first of all leaving the computer for a long time, which we do with super computers to solve big mathematical issues and other things, is very energy consuming. So energy efficiency is a very crucial point. And when I talk about being crucial I don’t mean that you don’t need to pay a large electricity bill, I mean that there isn’t enough energy produced to allow us to solve all the problems we would like to answer.
When it comes to time, it’s not about using Google or Facebook faster, rather you want to solve complicated issues about the whole universe, run simulations of proteins, molecules and atoms in your body. Galaxy Formation, Planetary Movements, Climate Change, Plate Tectonics, Drug Testing, Car Manufacturing, and the list goes on, even to the point of your Drive-Through lunch.
Today supercomputer are considered to be “the high end of computing”, and have been used to model difficult problems in many areas of science and engineering:
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Atmosphere, Earth, Environment
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Physics - applied, nuclear, particle, condensed matter, high pressure, fusion, photonics
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Bioscience, Biotechnology, Genetics
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Chemistry, Molecular Sciences
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Geology, Seismology
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Mechanical Engineering - from prosthetics to spacecraft
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Electrical Engineering, Circuit Design, Microelectronics
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Computer Science, Mathematics
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Defense, Weapons
Many of those fields do not only use parallel computers from time to time, but are dependent on them. That is why it is so important to develop these devices to make them faster, less energy consuming and money efficient. In fact many believe that the now being developed, Quantum computer is the Holy Grail of science, which will allow questing, that we can’t even imagine, to be solved.
Sources:
Introduction to Parallel Computing. (n.d.). Retrieved May 26, 2016, from https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/#WhyUse
Using nanotechnology to create parallel computers | Lund University. (n.d.). Retrieved May 26, 2016, from http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/using-nanotechnology-to-create-parallel-computers
Charles' Part - Nanobots
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Today these robots, macro or micro sized are being used in medicine. Each has its own use, but the main types of robots used in medicine are surgery, lifting, moving samples, bionic prosthetics and therapeutics.
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Tiny robots are soon be able to conduct surgery and deliver drugs inside the body. However it is not a reality at the moment. Imagine small tiny robots that could run around your body, giving drugs (when it requires), checking the artilleries, and generally keeping the body healthy. However, the human body is so complicated that creating a robot that is able to go inside of it, with a huge infrastructure and to do its job is a big challenge that is being faced today.
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Scientists that build nanobots are building tiny packages that are able to complete tasks in an automated way. Shawn Douglas, a researcher at the University of California in San Francisco said “Sensing, responding, detecting friend of foe, delivering a payload, delivering cargo, these are tasks that we build robots to do on the macro scale.” To add on to what he said, he also admits that calling it a technology nanobots is a PR move, however it will catch the people’s attention.
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The main purpose of these nanobots is to first, sense where they are, deliver a drug at the right location. In other words, let’s say a bot is carrying a drug which is to kill liver-cancer cells, it first finds where the cancer cells are, and when encountering the cells, release the drug to prevent it from spreading. But then this has many problems to it, because you are not dousing the body in poison until it reaches the target that it is supposed to kill, for example.
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Another challenge that the people making the nanobots are facing is that a lot of materials needs to be tested. The right bot needs to be chosen, and then after the ones that work to their expectations must be tested on more materials which not only does it cost a lot, but requires a lot of time.
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Another problem is the question of nanoparticle delivery. The researchers needs to and wants to be able to figure out the process, if it is doing what it is actually designed to do. Many questions start to pop-up; if it fails, what are the reasons as to why it failed? Was it detecting the cells? Or releasing the drug? Or was it the drug itself?
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Now what scientists are trying to do is use computer models and scan to predict and then track the nanobots on their whole trip.
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Even if these questions were to be answered, and both the robot and the drug work, it is then a matter of the FDA to approve this matter which may take eight to ten years.
It isn’t easy to build and implement nanobots. However once they do work, we can imagine these nanobots floating in our body, detecting any changes that may be dangerous. If an artery starts to get a clogged, or if a cancer node starts to grow, the robots would detect those changes, and alter their chemistry in response. But first researchers must overcome these problems that are being faced.
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Not only are nanobots only applied in medicine, but in fact it can be used in many other different types of field. Nanobots can also be used to give our physical body an upgrade. Now how might this give us an upgrade you may ask? Robert Freitas designed a bot called Respirocyte which can carry 9 billion oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules. This means that humans are able to run for 15 minutes without having to be out of breath! Besides the bots could give us strength, eyesight could be repaired and teeth cleaned by breaking down the muscle tissues.
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If we are talking about the environment and what nanobots can do for it, there are plenty. For example if an oil spill were to occur these bots could be deployed and start scrubbing every contaminated molecule. The water could be purified with the help of nanobots – they can destroy the water borne bacteria. There are endless possibilities with nanotechnology.
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References
Anderson, H. (2010). Nanobots. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from Microscope Master: http://www.microscopemaster.com/nanobots.html
Eveleth, R. (2015, August 6). Why There Aren't Yet Nanobot Doctors. Retrieved May 25, 2016, from Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/nanobot-treatment-doctors-cancer/400613/