Get ready for hi-tech healthcare

BANGALORE: Traces of the future canalways be seen in the present, and medical technologies that could hold sway inBangalore, in not so distant 2020, have already made the appearance on thehorizon.In the coming years, experts who have done crystal ballgazing for the City’s high-end health sector, expect it to be catering tonot just local patients, but even tourists from West Asia, neighbouring SouthAsian countries and even possibly Europe.Multi-speciality healthcomplexes or self-sustaining health cities offering a range of health-relatedservices from modern medicine to ayurveda, will hold sway, makinghospitalisation less bleak.The nature of diseases prevalent in theCity will also see a marked change — typical of greater affluence,sedentary lifestyles and changing family patterns.Diabetes and heartdiseases will be the predominant ailments affecting the majority. Dengue,malaria, gastroenteritis will take a backseat along with other communicablediseases.“As life expectancy continues to improve (it isprojected to be 70 by 2020), high-fat diets, cigarette smoking and sedentarylifestyles become more common. Non-communicable diseases then predominate withthe highest mortality caused by cardio vascular diseases, especially at agesbelow 50 years,’’ says a paper by a UK-based cardiology expert DrSalim Yousuf who is researching the changing dynamics of heartdisease.For those requiring heart surgeries by the year 2020, itcould be a page straight out of science fiction circa2002.“There will be no opening of the chest during heartsurgeries in the future. Surgeries will be assisted by robots.Everything will bedone remote control with the doctor being in his office and not the operationtheatre, say Dr Vivek Javali, cardiac surgeon at the WockhardtHospital.“We are already near achieving 40 per cent of thistechnology so it will probably become reality well before 2020,’’ hesays.Genes and the stories they tell will also become part andparcel of clinical diagnostics by 2020. It’s already happening on a smallscale.Families with histories of genetic disorders and defects willturn to profiles of their genes to determine vulnerability of its individualmembers, say experts.A gene profile could become as much apre-requisite for matchmakers as kundalis, as greater effort is made to preventthe transmission of defective genes to offspring, say genetics experts like DrSreedevi Hegde from the Manipal Hospital.Finally, the most-talkedabout technology of the current decade — stem cell technologies could beout of the laboratory and past testing on humans.At the RelianceLife Sciences unit in Mumbai, scientists have been able to produce beta isletscells, cardiomyocytes or heart tissue, and brain cells from embryonic stemcells.The insulin producing beta islet cells can serve asalternatives to the treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes, the heart tissue asa repair measure for congestive heart failure and brain cells as treatment forneuro degenerative disorders like Parkinsons.Much of what is beingseen on the horizon for the health sector is still like tiny dots. The continuedthriving of the economy and the health sector are crucial to the finalemergence.