HEALTH AND WELLNESS FUTURES
(Updated on a regular basis. Please check back soon!)
The Future Impact of Nanomedicines: Technologies, Patents, and Business Issues
New paradigms are shrinking our world and a classic technological revolution in medicine is in the making. Nanomedicine is part of the high risk, high payoff global nanotechnology phenomenon. In the drug-delivery arena, nanomedicine is poised to deliver both evolutionary and revolutionary products to the market. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies will continue to benefit from the ongoing R&D in nanomedicine because it has the ability to enhance the delivery and effectiveness of traditional drugs while revolutionizing and accelerating future drug discovery and development, improving productivity, and providing new drug-delivery technologies.
Examples of innovative products that cleverly integrate biological, information, and material sciences will be highlighted in this session, such as miniaturized nanofluidic devices and systems that more efficiently transport fluids to the site of delivery, preventing turbulence and mixing; more efficient site-specific or precision targeting via nanodrugs with reduced systemic side effects and better patient compliance; close-looped drug delivery nanodevices and implants (also known as “smart pills”) containing sensors and drug reservoirs located on the same chip; and microsurgical devices, molecular motors, or nanobots that are capable of navigating throughout the body to carry out targeted healing, such as repairing damaged sites, destroying tumors or viruses, and even performing gene therapy or vaccination. We will also address critical issues, strategies, and challenges relating to patenting such products and will discuss major factors that will drive commercialization in the near future.Who should attend: Futurists, health-care professionals, and policy makers.
What you’ll learn: Attendees will get a glimpse of the coming revolution in medicine. They will learn how nanomedicine will become the cornerstone of medical practice in the next decade as it enters the “golden era” of medicine. They will see how nanomedicine will impact every aspect of human existence in novel and revolutionary ways.
How this knowledge can be applied: This presentation will prepare you for the profound impact of nanomedicine in the future. Attendees will experience how nanomedicine will deliver evolutionary as well as revolutionary products to the market, enabling doctors and scientists to analyze and repair the human body in novel ways.Raj Bawa, president, Bawa Biotechnology Consulting LLC, Ashburn, Virginia; associate editor, Nanomedicine; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
key words: nanotechnology, nanomedicine, commercialization, pharmaceuticals, drug regulation
issue areas: Health and Wellness Futures; Governance and Communities; Technology and Science
Quantum Healing: The Future of Health Care
Imagine a world where AIDS is just another infection, and where cancer victims routinely experience spontaneous remission. Healing modalities of the past millennium are quickly giving way to breakthrough, innovative techniques. We are at the cusp of realizing radical technologies that promises to forever change the way we think about well-being and human potential.
Everything is energy and everything vibrates at a unique frequency, including diseases. Energetic measuring systems seek and measure frequencies that exist in consciousness and for every imbalance, there is a frequency that will neutralize it. What this offers is the paradigm shift to healing, as opposed to the realm of diagnosing and curing. This is the beginning of a massive increase in consciousness and a giant step into the inevitable future of quantum healing.
This technology is measurable and uses the holographic principle in physics. The works of physicists David Bohm and Niels Bohr indicate that the universe is actually a three-dimensional projection no more real than a hologram, and that everything in the universe is infinitely interconnected and therefore holds the “secret” toward healing and quantum consciousness.Who should attend: Anyone and everyone who cares about their health and the health of those they love.
What you’ll learn: Attendees will hear how the purpose of this new technology is to assist the flow of a person’s life force. Participants will also learn what is occurring in our world that stands in the way of us advancing and healing ourselves, the implications if this technology is accepted by the mainstream and quantum healing occurs, and the dire consequences for people who do not soon become energetically balanced.
How this knowledge can be applied: This knowledge can be applied immediately by becoming a participant and taking the first steps to quantum healing. At the very best, since knowledge is power, attendees can apply this to their own decisions on their health care.Brenda Miller, chief global strategist, New Crotona, St. Paul, Minnesota
key words: technology, health
issue areas: Health and Wellness Futures; Technology and Science; Futures Methodologies, Tools, and Processes
The Future Impact of Personalized Medicine: Technologies, Finance, Research, and Business Issues
This session introduces new scientific, policy, and business concepts impacting new models of linking genomics, informatics, imaging, systems networking, and unique healthcare stakeholders to create the necessary infrastructure for individualized medicine to take shape in the U.S. healthcare marketplace.
A review of an academic study that qualitatively and quantitatively captures what the broad stakeholder community believes about personalized medicine and what they plan to do within their own enterprises over the next five years with that understanding will be discussed. Examples of innovative products that integrate biological, informatics, miniaturization, robotics, and material sciences will be highlighted in this session. Critical issues, strategies, and challenges relating to delivery of these products, and some of the major factors that will drive these advances in the future will also be addressed.Who should attend: Futurists, healthcare professionals, economists, and policy makers.
What you’ll learn: Attendees will get a glimpse of the current evolution in clinical medicine and specialty healthcare delivery. They will learn how the convergence of molecular, informatics, and imaging technologies will become the new platform of medical practice in the next decade. They will see how these technologies and real-world applications will take full advantage of new opportunities that will impact every aspect of healthcare delivery.
How this knowledge can be applied: This presentation will prepare attendees for the possibly disruptive impacts of informatics, robotics, etc., on the practice of medicine in the future. Attendees will also learn how these technologies and their applied integration will deliver revolutionary products to the marketplace, enabling doctors, patients, and consumers to alter their engagement in U.S. healthcare.Patrick F. Terry, founder, Personalized Medicine Coalition, Washington, D.C.
key words: personalized medicine, individualized medicine, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, drug policy
issue areas: Health and Wellness Futures; Technology and Science; Governance and Communities
The Future of Health and Health Care
We live in a remarkable time. Ray Kurzweil argues that if baby boomers live long enough—for example, into their 90s—the technology that will exist by that point will enable them to live forever. There is great promise for reversing major diseases. Yet, the U.S. health-care system is itself in a near terminal state. And there are serious disparities in health and health care. The need for a comprehensive transformation of our system is clear. This session touches on highlights and breakthroughs in several disease areas, explores current prospects for sustainable health-care reform, and showcases emerging opportunities to reduce health disparities.
Who should attend: Government officials, business executives, planners, and individuals interested in health care and its costs. Also, anyone interested in how the United States can live up to the American dream of fairness in health care and health outcomes.
What you’ll learn: Participants will learn about the determinants of health; major advances in health and health care, including ones related to diabetes and cancer; major advances that could reduce health disparities, e.g., focusing on the social and economic determinants of health and improving healthy eating and active living; and health-care reform potentials in the United States.
How this knowledge can be applied: This information can be applied to considering or reconsidering the aspirations and planning of your organization, your personal sense of longevity, your personal and professional sense of your preferred future for health and health care, and what you can do to make it happen.Clement Bezold, chairman of the board and founder, Institute for Alternative Futures; contributing editor, THE FUTURIST magazine, Alexandria, Virginia
key words: health, health care, disease
issue area: Health and Wellness Futures
click here to go back to issue areas
