5 Ways Science Is Improving Global Healthcare
For many years, science and medicine have gone hand in hand. Science lays the groundwork for global health gains. It improves better, healthier lives for all people by unlocking findings and fueling innovation, informing policies and programs, breaking down obstacles, and ultimately opening discoveries and fueling innovation. Pharmaceutical and medical innovations have saved millions of lives and improved the lives of many more. It’s impossible to predict what medical breakthroughs will be made as time passes and technology improves, but here are five ways science is improving global healthcare.
- Creating interventions and health programs that positively impact healthcare
How often should you change an insecticide-treated bed net, and how many tears can it take before it stops working? Can experts anticipate which technologies and initiatives, if scaled up, will save the most lives in a country in an era of limited resources? For example, industry experts such as Brad Schaeffer with MedComp Sciences have used e-commerce to close a gap in the healthcare market. Schaeffer’s creation of Roz (an amazon type online portal for goods and services) has made healthcare more convenient without compromising quality and personalization.
How can health experts persuade individuals to wash their hands more often to prevent childhood disease and deaths? These challenges are scientists, data analysts, and other health researchers tackle in labs, offices, and program sites worldwide. The information they receive assist in better focusing health solutions and fine-tuning health initiatives to save more lives and money.
- Treatments and vaccinations to combat the world’s deadliest diseases
Science has produced new health technologies that have spurred significant advances in global health, from antiretroviral therapies that have dramatically extended the lives of individuals living with HIV and AIDS to vaccines for polio, amongst others.
- Wearable healthcare devices
People nowadays can use their phones to keep track of everything from their steps, fitness, and heartbeat to their sleeping patterns. These wearable technologies are advancing in tandem with the rise of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They attempt to battle these by assisting patients in monitoring and improving their fitness.
- Working in tandem with other technological advances to combat global health concerns
The approach to combating global diseases and health concerns is transformed by the revolution in mobile technology and digital health. Doctors are taking advantage of text messages to remind patients to take their tuberculosis drugs and other treatment adherence. Health ministries adopt innovative data visualization tools to turn a mountain of data into accessible and usable information to assist decision-making.
- Real-time tracking of health risks
Science acts as a preventive tool in medicine. It enables experts to detect, predict and track infectious disease outbreaks and other emerging outbreaks. Its uses range from using weather patterns to forecast the risk of insect-borne disease outbreaks. Also, genomics and evolutionary theory predict how bacteria will become antibiotic-resistant to developing systems that combine crowdsourced data with traditional disease surveillance. Early discovery can mean the difference between an outbreak turning into an epidemic and a successful response.
