Science fiction or fact

“Pass me the proton gun”. That’s what I felt like saying after I heard that one of my tablets is called a Proton Pump Inhibitor. Surely it’s a laser gun, not a tablet, or at least an inter dimensional portal opening device.

It feels like medical science has shot on so fast in the last few years that the technology on my old favourite TV shows look like cave man tech in comparison. I used to think Star Trek had such amazing equipment. But in the early shows they just lay on a medical bed and a gigantic display read out heart rate and other vitals. You can now buy a ring on Amazon that will give you heart rate, oxygen and sleep patterns, a ring! Just about any smart watch does the same, well without the oxygen read out, unless you get an add on.

Sleep monitoring ring

A couple of years ago I bought an endoscope, to look behind a radiator. An actual endoscope. That’s a fibre optic cable that enables you to view into tiny holes and gaps. They use them in medicine to view down your throat and up the other end. My endoscope plugged into my laptop and enabled me to view a video feed on the laptop, now you can get Bluetooth ones that connect to your phone wirelessly and you view the feed on your phone. Of course they say, not for medical use. But they are effectively the same devices, available for a few quid. Don’t tell me no one is tempted to use them medically, hopefully none of my friends.

Then there’s the space age materials, around today. Pressure relieving gels made of silicone, breathable fabrics, super absorbent pads, and all the new polymers, plastics to you and I. Then what about the leap forward in electronic controls. I was looking at, well to be honest I was coveting, an amazing hospital bed on eBay. It was able to profile into a seat from a bed. The controls on it would not look out of place on a space ship. Multiple controls, read outs, even a colour LCD display. These days the simple controls on beds, chairs, wheelchairs and hoists are touch control. They use a circuit board level switches under the plastic cover. The more advanced even use the conducive type found on smart phone screens. These are technologies that didn’t exist when I was younger.

You can monitor most medical read outs via your smart phone and let’s face it a smart phone is one of the most incredible advances out. If you had told me when I was a teenager, much less a child, that I would be able to own a hand held computer that could: communicate with anyone on the planet with video and sound. Run so many applications the mind boggles. Track my location to a few metres. Speak to me and understand me. Translate most languages, well sort of. Be pointed at an object or place and tell me what it is. Take high definition photos and videos. Be a word processor, a desk top publisher, a portable power point device, an excel spread sheet, a complex calculation device, a drawing tablet, a video editor, a photo editor. I haven’t even scratched the surface. If you had said I could own one of these I would have laughed. Or I would have assumed it would be massive or cost thousands. But the vast majority of us now have and rely on smart phones.

My smart phone connects to my Hive heating, can check my cctv cameras, switch on my smart plugs and lights. It also links to my Amazon Alexa system. How much longer before we routinely get smart monitoring and medicine dispensing for dementia patients. I believe it already exists. Or how about a push button food preparation for people like me. Where a meal is taken from the fridge or freezer, heated and delivered to my bed robotically. Personally, although I could see that and even robotic care as possible in the future, I would never choose to replace human beings with machines. You would lose so much. Human contact is not replaceable by machines and it is vital to our wellbeing.

I like technology, it’s fun and helpful. But it has its place and its limits.

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