Integration Challenges of Healthcare and Technology with Drones

​Dr. T V Gopal

Professor, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Anna University, Chennai, India

Image: FlyPulse

InnovaSpace thanks Dr. T V Gopal for bringing attention to the use of drone technology in healthcare. The popularity of drones has been boosted greatly over the past decade, with huge advances in technology leading to drone weight reductions, lower costs, and improved capabilities and performance, particularly through the introduction of an autopilot, and softwares capable of analysing flight dynamics in real-time and ensuring flight stability.  We publish here some of his thoughts related to the Integration Challenges of Healthcare and Technology with Drones.

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"The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore, the physician must start from nature, with an open mind." - Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus (Swiss Physician, Alchemist, and Astrologer of the German Renaissance)

The art of healing, the healing process itself, started with quaint symbolisms. The concepts of "Uniformity in Practice" and "Repeatability of a Cure" gradually emerged as the two dominant principles in Medical Sciences, and the development of new technologies promises to meet the expectations on both these principles.
However, the integration between technology and medicine is not a simple task. It is believed that the key enablers for this integration to happen are:

• Interfaces and Adapters
• Healthcare Portals & Management
• Data and Process Models
• Products & Tools
• Standard Reference Models & Medical Bibliographic Systems
• Ecosystems of the Stakeholders

The application of drone technology in healthcare presents different challenges in integrating materials science, human-computer interfaces, knowledge and content management. Understanding what patients think and feel about their disease and medications is leading to tailored support programs that effectively improve healing outcomes. ​

What an individual actually thinks and the creation of a memory might be recreated by the use of software algorithms that generate images based on recorded brain activity. This might sound like science fiction, but it is not. It is a reality for millions of patients worldwide for whom mind-controlled technology has been of great help to move paralyzed limbs. 
It is a fact that scientists have been detecting brainwaves for more than a century, and this knowledge in recent years has been applied in the development of drone technologies, in which they are controlled by people’s thoughts. This might give a different shape to the relationship between medicine and medical technology. 

In the words of Dr. Alexis Carrel, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912, in recognition of his work on vascular suture and the transplantation of blood vessels and organs, he said: “It is certain that a thought may be transmitted from one individual to another, even if they are separated by long distance. These facts, which belong to the new science of metaphysics, must be accepted just as they are… They express a rare and almost unknown aspect of ourselves… What extraordinary penetration would result from the union of disciplined intelligence and of the telepathic aptitude”.

“Ignited minds are more powerful than thermonuclear energy”'
​ A P J Abdul Kalam, Formerly President of India
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Dr. Gopal can be contacted at:  gopal@annauniv.edu ; gopal.tadepalli@gmail.com