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Biomedical Technologies
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20227 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1992 |
3,166 Words |
| Author
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Ernest G. Cravalho
Ernest G. Cravalho is the Edward Hood Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
A few years ago, there appeared on television two shows, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, that portrayed the adventures of two individuals, one male and one female, who were the amalgams of normal humans and the best that fictionalized biomedical engineering had to offer. Not surprisingly, these televisions show precipitated in many of the young people who watched them a desire to become the biomedical engineer who could create such marvels. As a result, the numbers of people entering the profession of biomedical engineering have growth significantly in recent years.
In the coming decades, as these young engineers live out their fantasies, we should expect to see the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman become realities. If life truly imitates art, by the year 2042, humans will be fitted with a variety of electronic and mechanical devices that will enable them, at the very least, to carry on "normal" lives (if not perform superhuman feats) when they otherwise might have suffered lives of incapacitation due to trauma and disease. While these achievements are noteworthy in themselves, advances in biomedical technology over the next 50 years will extend way beyond these examples.
Precisely what these accomplishments might be is difficult to predict at this time. In looking back at the advances in biomedical technology since 1942, it would appear at first glance that no one could have predicted from that vantage point where we would be in 1992. In fact, the growth of biomedical technology has been so great during the past decade alone that one could not have predicted its process 10 years ago. However, while we might not have envisioned the details of the great strides in areas such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology during the last decade, we could argue that the general directions in which biomedical technology was heading over the last 50 years were obvious in 1942.
Historically there have been some technological themes common to every decade as long as there have been technologists and practitioners of health care. These themes are just as likely to be relevant in the half century between now and 2042. Innovators of biomedical technology have been motivated in large part by the need to aid the physician. Over the past century, medicine has been practiced largely on the basis of observation: The physician makes certain observations about the physiological condition of the patient, and based upon his knowledge and experience from treating patients who evidenced similar conditions, the physician prescribes a
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