Evolution in medical devices – Eduardo Mangieri
20th October 2020
The very first medical device was the human himself, observing, analysing, creating his/her conclusions in order to find the best therapy to help the diseased.
Over the course of the last 7000 years, humans’ hunger for knowledge and understanding required the development of tools, which we now more sophistically call “devices”. Such tools started in the most simplistic manner and in time have become very complex to fabricate. Up to this point such tools were still pure hardware; compared to humans who could push the barriers further to understand, and analyse, the smallest signs and signals coming from a patient. As hardware approached its asymptote, the next advanced tool was “software”. The beauty of software is that it is simply the continuation of hardware: i.e. The hardware captures the data (even the smallest piece of information not visible to the human eye) and the software reads, extracts & amplifies such low level information.
As medicine and technology concurrently evolved, the software itself started to mirror this development creating more complex mathematical logics (also known as algorithms) to determine the meaning of certain symptoms within patients. Consequently, as hardware is reaching its asymptotes and software is rapidly evolving (catching up with the humans), it has now become extremely important for the humans (clinicians) to use such tools to support and help the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of patients.
My colleagues Gerard Kool & Karl Jeebaun have written interesting articles on 1) the evolution of medical products and technology and 2) the adaptability and the importance of telemedicine tools for the survival of medical businesses, which I invite you to read.
The beauty of who we are
It’s very important for every clinician (and anyone dealing with patients/customers) to remember that we cover a parental figure for the person in front of us. For a patient reaching out to us, seeing our faces will be already the first step to helping them. Therefore, as all fathers and mothers do, we should be using the best tools that we can access to help our sons and daughters in need.
As the world evolves, so do our lives
Nature, life, decisions, choices… things have always been difficult, and even though we as humans wouldn’t have liked things to be any different, Mother Nature has now thrown us a new challenge which we must accept if we want to survive. There is no need to name this challenge as it has affected everyone’s life on this planet. One thing we can do is learn as much as we can from this beast, and act accordingly. Consequently our tools, and the way we interact with our patients, must mutate if we want to keep our patients and our medical institutions. Adaptability and connectivity with our patients has become one of the highest priorities in any medical sector; therefore, it’s crucial that clinicians have access to professional and reliable tools* which will allow us to reach our patients whenever they need our help [*tele-medicine].
At AOS we maintain our extremely high standards to make sure our customers (health professionals) look after their patients with the best and most reliable tools available in the market. Our upgrades on the Anterior software have escalated us to a ‘step-ahead’ in the market – thanks to the telemedicine platform which we provide. Clinicians and patients, can easily communicate, video call, text, chat, send information to each other safely and securely.
Our health professionals can now receive high quality images of their patients eyes highlighting their current pathology to enable an objective analysis of the condition. From this the diagnosis and treatment plan can be discussed and the patient’s information archived in the most secure manner. They can receive their treatment via home delivery – without the patient leaving the comfort, and safety, of their home.
And so now the ‘human’ is protected and cared for by the software. Evolution at its best.
Eduardo Mangieri, Chairman at AOS